SS Columbus, May 23, l85l
H. Hopkins and B. Hopkins arrived on the
SS New Orleans, September 20, 1851
This may be the Hopkins of the hotel family, but it has not been verified (as of July 25, 1999).
Mark Hopkins was originally from Randolph County, North Carolina, and came to San Francisco by an unknown, indirect route with his twice-divorced, corn whiskey-drinking, horse-thief brother Moses, arriving on the SS Columbus on May 23, 1851.
Mark Hopkins emerged as one of the major players in early California, along with Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker and Collis P. Huntington. Of this group, Hopkins probably did the most to promote the great transcontinental railroad line across the rugged Sierra Nevadas, and with other members of this group, Hopkins' had one of the largest Victorian homes built atop the City's famous Nob Hill. His mansion (or palace, as Robert Louis Stevenson called it), built in 1878, burned to the ground in the great earthquake and fire of 1906. The man that eventually bought that site named the hotel after Mark Hopkins.
A Mark Hopkins from New York also arrived on California's shores during California's formative years. One account relates that this Mark Hopkins formed the New England Mining Company, comprised of 26 men, each of whom invested $500 in the venture. With a capital of $13,000, they bought a large supply of mining equipment, which they intended to sell in California. They sailed from New York on the SS Pacific on January 22, 1849, arriving in San Francisco on August 5, 1849. A card from this group was printed in the San Francisco's Alta California newspaper on August 23, 1849:
San Francisco, August 10, 1849Both Mark Hopkins' were in Sacramento during the Gold Rush, both were merchants, and both were connected for a number of years with the Central Pacific Railroad. Photographs from 1856 exist of the North Carolina Hopkins' in Huntington, Hopkins & Co., 54 K Street, a dry-goods store. One or both of them made repeated trips on steamers to/from the Eastern Seaboard after their arrival in San Francisco: A Mark Hopkins is listed several more times on the passenger lists as arriving in The City. As both were merchants, it is conceivable that they went East on buying trips.
To Captain George T. Estabrooks:
Dear Sir--The undersigned passengers recently arrived on board the ship Pacific from New York, beg leave to use this method of expressing to you some small degree of the gratitude we owe you for the kindness shown us, on all occasions, during your command of that ship from Rio Janeiro to this port. We assure you we shall ever carry with us a pleasing recollection of a voyage that, though often attended by trials and dangers, has been a source of so much pleasure to us through your humanity and unsurpassed seamanship.
Ezra A. Hopkins, Michigan; E.H. Miller, Jr., W.K. Sherwood, New York; Mark Hopkins.
Estelle Latta, a descendant on her father's side of North Carolina Mark Hopkins brother James and on her mother's side of Mark Hopkins' brother Martin, wrote a book of the Hopkins in an attempt to unravel the story of the two Mark Hopkins and to reveal the fate of the North Carolina Hopkins' fortune. Unusual circumstances surrounded the death of Hopkins and it was her contention that there was fraudulent distribution of Mark Hopkins' wealth after his death. Her book: Controversial Mark Hopkins: The Great Swindle of American History (Cothron Historical and Research Foundation, Duke University, 1953, reprinted 1963) opines that when Mark Hopkins died in 1878, he was stripped of his true identity and his vast wealth, which went to satisfy the ruthless ambition and greed of his associates.
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