Find A Grave Memorial# 52415789

This profile is for the *second* Damaris Hopkins (b ca 1628) after her sister Damaris Hopkins died.

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Descendants of Stephen Hopkins

Second Generation

Stephen returned home sometime between 1613-17, perhaps with the intent of selling his belongings in England and bringing his family to their new home in Virginia. After having survived shipwreck and the perils of Jamestown, it must have been a great blow to find his wife and estate gone, and his children entrusted to the care of the Church.

By late 1617 Stephen and his children had settled into a home just outside of the east wall of London, where he was said to be working as a tanner. On February 9, 1618, in the local church of St. Mary Matfellon in Whitechapel, he married his second wife, Elizabeth Fisher. In late 1618 Elizabeth and Stephen added another child to the family – a daughter they named Damaris.

Stephen HOPKINS Mayflower(1374). —He most likely was the Stephen Hopkins who sailed on the Seaventure to Virginia in 1609, but was shipwrecked in Bermuda, where he was almost hanged for mutiny. He spent two years in Jamestown, where he learned much of later use to the Plymouth colonists (Adventurers of Purse and Person —Virginia 1607-1625, ed. by Annie Lash Jester with Martha Woodroof Hiden, 2nd ed. (1964), p. 213-17). See also the excellent account of his family in Dawes-Gates 2:443-51, which includes the reasoning for believing that the Stephen Hopkins of Virginia was identical with the one of Plymouth.

Hopkins arrived at Plymouth on the 1620 Mayflower accompanied by his wife, Elizabeth, and his sons Giles and Oceanus, and daughters Constance and Damaris, Oceanus having been born at sea on the Mayflower, plus two servants, Edward Doty and Edward Leister. Damaris died during the early years, and Hopkins and his wife later had a second daughter Damaris. He was probably also one of the dissenters at Plymouth whose actions led to the necessity for drafting the Mayflower Compact. Bradford (Ford) 1:219, and Mourt's Relation, p. 40, tell how in 1621 the colonists sent Mr. Edward <Picture>Winslow<Picture> and Mr. Stephen Hopkins on a mission to visit Massasoit. Mourt's Relation, pp. 7-8, also shows how Hopkins warned colonists on an early expedition about an Indian trap to catch deer, and how Bradford, not hearing the warning, stepped on the trap and was immediately caught by his leg. When Samoset first came to the settlement on 16 February 1620/21, the Englishmen were suspicious of him, and they "lodged him that night at Steven Hopkins house, and watched him" (Mourt's Relation, p. 33). Hopkins was an Assistant at least as early as 1633, and he continued in 1634, 1635, and 1636. He was on the original freeman list, and he was a volunteer in the Pequot War (PCR 1:61).

Keeping in mind the delicate balance in Plymouth between "covenant" and "noncovenant" colonists, it is reasonable to assume that Hopkins must have been a leader of the non-Separatist settlers, and in his career at Plymouth can be seen some of the ambiguity that attached to the non-Separatists living in a Separatist colony. On 7 June 1636, at a time when Hopkins was an Assistant, the General Court found him guilty of battery against John Tisdale, and he was fined £5, and ordered to pay Tisdale forty shillings, the court observing that he had broken the King's peace, "wch [p.309] he ought after a speciall manner to have kept" (PCR 1:42). On 2 October 1637 he was presented twice, first for suffering men to drink in his house on the Lord's day before meeting ended, and for allowing servants and others to drink more than proper for ordinary refreshing, and second for suffering servants and others to sit drinking in his house contrary to orders of the court, and to play at shovel board and like misdemeanors (PCR 1:68). On 2 January 1637/38 Hopkins was presented for suffering excessive drinking in his house "as old Palmer, James Coale, & William Renolds" (PCR 1:75). On 5 June 1638 he was presented for selling beer for two pence a quart which was not worth a penny a quart, and for selling wine at excessive rates "to the oppressing & impovishing of the colony"; he was fined £5 for some of these offenses, including selling strong waters and nutmegs at excessive rates (PCR 1:87, 97). In the Dorothy Temple case (see text) he was "committed to ward for his contempt to the Court, and shall so remayne comitted untill hee shall either receive his servant Dorothy Temple, or els pvide for her elsewhere at his owne charge during the terme shee hath yet to serve him" (PCR 1:112). On 3 December 1639 he was presented for selling a looking glass for sixteen pence which could be bought in the Bay Colony for nine pence, and he was also fined £3 for selling strong water without license" (PCR 1:137). Jonathan Hatch, who from the records seems to have been a recurring disciplinary problem in the colony, on 5 April 1642 was ordered by the court to dwell with Mr. Stephen Hopkins, "& the said Mr Hopkins to have a speciall care of him" (PCR 2:38).

xxx He dated his will 6 June 1644, inventory 17 July 1644, and mentioned his deceased wife; sons Giles and Caleb; daughter Constance, wife of Nicholas Snow; daughters Deborah, Damaris, Ruth and Elizabeth; and grandson Stephen, son of his son Giles (MD 2:12). Ralph D. Phillips, "Hopkins Family of Wortley, Gloucestershire—Possible Ancestry of Stephen Hopkins," TAG 39:95, suggests that he might have come from the parish of Wotten-under-Edge, Gloucestershire, but the evidence is not sufficient to say positively. Some writers, such as Banks in English Ancestry, pp. 61-64, and Jacobus in Waterman Family, 1:86, have felt that his wife, Elizabeth, may have been Elizabeth Fisher, whom a Stephen Hopkins married at London 19 February 1617/18—Mourt's Relation, p. 15, states that he was of London. If so, she would have been a second wife, for the births of some of his children would predate this marriage. Dawes-Gates 2:443, citing the London marriage record, states that his wife was "undoubtedly" Elizabeth Fisher. Timothy Hopkins, "Stephen Hopkins of the Mayflower and Some of His Descendants," NEHGR 102:46, 98, 197, 257, 103:24, 85, 166, 304, 104:52, 123, 213, 296, 105:32, 100, covers some of his early generations, but it is not documented. George E. Bowman wrote an article in MD 5:47 to consolidate much of the early information known about his family. A popularized biography of Stephen Hopkins was written by Margaret Hodges, Hopkins of the Mayflower—Portrait of a Dissenter (New York, 1972). Claims that a John Hopkins of Hartford, Connecticut, was his son are baseless. By his first wife he had Constance, who married Nicholas Snow, and [p.310] Giles, who married Catherine Wheldon. By Elizabeth Fisher he had the Damaris, who died young; Oceanus, who died young; Caleb, who died at Barbados as an adult without issue; Deborah, who married Andrew Ring; the second Damaris, who married Jacob Cooke, son of Francis; Ruth, who died without issue; and Elizabeth, who died without issue (Dawes-Gates, 2:449).

Children were: Damaris HOPKINS Mayflower.

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Damaris Hopkins Cooke was one of the original 101 Pilgrims on the Mayflower. She made the voyage with her parents Stephen Hopkins and Elizabeth Fisher Hopkins in 1620.

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Passenger on the Mayflower

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http://www.mayflowerhistory.com/Passengers/DamarisHopkins.php