Mark Hopkins arrived in San Francisco on the
SS Pacific, August 1849
(Mark Hopkins is also noted as arriving in San Francisco on the SS Columbus, May 23, 1851 with text reading: "Mark Hopkins 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." According to a researcher, there was only one Mark Hopkins in the 1850, 1860 and 1870 California census and the one listed in the census is "clearly the railroad baron" born in New York.)
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.
Mark Hopkins 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, 1849
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.
Mark Hopkins was a merchant in Sacramento during the Gold Rush, and was 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.
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.