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Stephen and Elizabeth Hopkins – Mayflower Survivors

Kathryn Haueisen (Kathy) — Fri, 15 Jul 2022 08:30:00 +0000

I’m hiding out in the 17th Century until news in the 21st Century improves. The Stephen Hopkins Family make a marvelous distraction. They traveled to Plymouth, MA on the Mayflower in 1620. Stephen and Elizabeth are one of the more famous and fascinating couples among the eighteen couples aboard. On this trip to North American Stephen traveled with his second wife, Elizabeth Fisher Hopkins, and three children. Elizabeth was pregnant with a fourth child when they began the crossing.

Stephen’s first cross-Atlantic voyage resulted in his being shipwrecked for ten months in Bermuda. Eventually he made it to Jamestown, after helping construct a new ship from the remnants of the original one. He stayed in England several years during which time his first wife Mary died. When he eventually received work of her death months later, he returned to England to assume responsibility for his motherless children.

Stephen was from Hampshire, England. He and Mary lived in Hampshire, where their three children were born and baptized. Two of their children, Constance, and Giles, accompanied Stephen and second wife Elizabeth on the Mayflower. Stephen and Mary had another daughter, also an Elizabeth, who did not travel with her father. She may have died by 1620. Stephen and Elizabeth had a daughter, Damaris, born in 1618, who also traveled with them.

Who was Elizabeth Hopkins?

As is typical for women’s history, we know little about Elizabeth other than she married Stephen and traveled with him on his second voyage. She is perhaps best known for delivering her baby as they sailed across the ocean. Babies are born when they’re ready to be born, unless medical intervention alters the birth date. There was no medical intervention available for Elizabeth. She went into labor on the ship, in deplorable living conditions, with no privacy and few of the comforts typically offered birthing mothers. Miraculously, the child was born healthy and Elizabeth lived to raise him. They named the child Oceanus. Apparently the child did not live long, though he did survive childbirth. The death rate through the first winter was nearly 50%.

Elizabeth’s maiden name was Fisher, but information about her family is inconclusive. She and Stephen married on 19 February 1617/18. Dates for historical events in this time period fluctuate, depending on whether one uses the Julian calendar, in use until 1752, or the Gregorian calendar, the one used today. Elizabeth was one of only four adult women still alive by the famous Thanksgiving feast in the fall of 1621..

Stephen Hopkins’ Shipwreck Story

While married to his first wife, Stephen went to work as a clerk for Pastor Richard Buck and traveled with him on the Sea Venture toward Jamestown in 1609. Hopkins signed on for a three-year-term as an indentured servant to the Virginia Company, leaving Mary and three young children behind.

The Sea Venture traveled with a fleet of ships, but got separated from them in a violent storm. The ship blew off course and shipwrecked in the “Isle of Devils” in Bermuda. The stranded men survived for ten months, living on wildlife. Stephen was part of an organized mutiny against the governor and sentenced to death for his part in it. However, he begged for mercy on behalf of his wife and children back in England and his life was spared. He and the others built two small ships, the Deliverance and Patience. Stephen sailed to Jamestown on the Deliverance.

The Jamestown colonists’ situation was desperate. No one had planted a garden, their food supply was nearly gone, and they had so alienated the Indigenous people that they were afraid to leave the fort to hunt for food. Hopkins stayed at Jamestown until September 1614. When he got the news that Mary had died in May 1613, he returned to England to assume care of his minor children and then married Elizabeth.

On the Sea Again

Stephen must have possessed a large portion of persuasion for he convinced Elizabeth to join him and the others on the Mayflower voyage. Or, more likely, Elizabeth decided taking her chances on the crossing was a better option than staying back to raise her children, and his motherless children by herself. She most certainly would have have known Mary died while Stephen was away and feared facing the same fate. The ship was supposed to sail in July, giving them plenty of time to arrive in the New World and perhaps even build their own shelter before the baby was born.

The Mayflower did not sail in July. Or August. It left England, after two delayed departures, on September 6. Though we know little about Elizabeth, I think it safe to conclude she must have been a resilient and hearty woman. She survived a storm that nearly capsized the ship, gave birth while sailing, and lived through the first winter, when most of the other women did not. Stephen and Elizabeth had five more children in Plymouth: Caleb, Deborah, Damaris, Ruth, and Elizabeth. Stephen had two daughters named Elizabeth, one mothered by Mary, and one with his second wife, Elizabeth. Stephen and Elizabeth named their first daughter Damaris. She died in childhood and they gave another daughter the same name.

Life in Plymouth

Stephen played an active role among the Separatists when they first arrived in Cape Cod, though he was not part of the Separatist fellowship. He went on the early explorations in search of the best place to establish their colony. He’d encountered Indigenous people before and thus presented himself as the resident expert on them. He and Elizabeth hosted Samoset for a night when the Native visited the new Plantation in the spring of 1621.

When the Pokanoket leader, Massasoit Ousa Mequin, called on the English to work out a treaty, Hopkins offered up their home as a meeting place for the negotiations. Later he and other Englishmen visited the Pokanoket people and he served as an assistant to the governor through 1636.

Stephen was brave, but also trouble-prone. In 1636 he got into a fight with John Tisdale and seriously wounded him. The next year he was fined for allowing people to drink and play shuffleboard on the Sabbath in his house. In each of the next two years he was again fined; once for selling beer at an inflated price and a second time for charging double what a looking glass should have cost.

It makes sense that a man who survived a shipwreck, helped build a new ship, and convinced his pregnant wife to sail far from home, with three children, would be capable of taking risks that sometimes ended in trouble. His troubles ended in 1644 when he died and was interred next to his Elizabeth in Cove Burying Ground in Eastham, MA. Her death in Plymouth is calculated to have been between 1638 and 1644.

The photo of the Deliverance is the property of Caleb Johnson and used with his permission. More details about Stephen Hopkins is available at Mayflower History and in Johnson’s book about the man, Here Shall I Die Ashore. You may also enjoy reading Pilgrim and Native Peace Talks.

Thank you for taking time to read about this remarkable Mayflower couple. If you enjoyed it, share it with a friend. If you got this from a friend, you can sign up for your own free subscription at HowWiseThen.

Mayflower Chronicles: The Tale of Two Cultures covers the Pilgrim’s escape from England and much more of the interaction between them and the Pokanoket people. Available wherever books are sold in paperback, eBook, and audio.
Bookshop.org (Supporting local Indie Bookshops)
Amazon.com/Mayflower-Chronicles-Tale-Two-Cultures/
BarnesandNoble.com/w/mayflower-chronicles-kathryn-haueisen/
Autographed copies available from BlueWillowBookShop.com/book/

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Mayflower Adventurer Stephen Hopkins

Kathryn Haueisen (Kathy) — Fri, 23 Aug 2019 08:30:43 +0000

Only about a third of the Mayflower passengers were part of the religious refugees who fled England to live in the more tolerant Holland before sailing on the famous ship. Stephen Hopkins and his second wife, Elizabeth were among those who sailed for other reasons. His biography is amazing.

He was born in 1581 in Upper Clatford, Hampshire, England. By 1604 he was living in Hursley, Hampshire and married to Mary. Their first child was daughter Elizabeth. The next child was also a daughter, Constance, followed by their son, Giles. We know he was still in England when the Separatists refugees fled for the Netherlands because he was fined in May 1608 in England, though for what we do not know.

A New Career and a Long Voyage

About that time Pastor Richard Buck with the Virginia Company hired him to serve as his clerk and do the readings for Sunday Services. Accepting the position meant leaving Mary and three young children behind in England. He sailed for the Jamestown Colony from Plymouth, England in June 1609.

People in England had heard that after two only years the settlers in Jamestown faced famine, Indian attacks, and mismanagement. Understandably, people were discouraged and some refused to work. The Virginia Company sent a fleet of seven ships and two small pinnaces to assist them. Thomas Gates, the newly appointed Jamestown Governor, was one of the passengers.

After about six weeks at sea the ships encountered a ferocious storm. The ships in the fleet got separated. Hopkins, Governor Gates, and the fleet’s Admiral George Summers sailed the Sea Venture, along with about 140 other men and ten women. Sea Venture Captain Christopher Newport had delivered the first settlers to Jamestown in 1607.

Way Off Course

For nearly a week the storm raged about them, threatening to swamp the ship. Men worked in shifts, bailing water for an hour, sleeping for an hour, and returning to bail water for another hour. Finally, when things seem most desperate and hopeless, Admiral Summers called out, “Land!”

The crew put up full sails and ran the ship aground. Using the ship’s longboat, they moved everyone safely to shore, where they remained shipwrecked in the Bermuda’s, on an island known as “Isle of the Devils.” In September two men left to go for help from Jamestown. They never returned.

Discontentment spread like a contagious disease. In January Hopkins was charged with mutiny for insisting that, since they were not in Virginia Company territory, they were not obligated to obey the Virginia Company authorities. Though he apologized, he was none-the-less sentenced to death. He threw himself on the mercy of the Governor and the court, begging for mercy for the sake of his wife and children left behind in England. He lived to see other adventures.

On the Sea Again

By April 1610, nine months after they shipwrecked, they had two pinnaces ready to sail – appropriately named Deliverance and Patience. They arrived in Jamestown on May 21 to discover those still alive were desperate. No one had planted any crops. Their food supplies were nearly gone. Relationships with the Natives had degenerated to the point they were afraid to leave the fort. Governor Gates was preparing to lead them all north to Newfoundland and from there, back to England on a fishing vessel. Before they left, an English ship sailed into the harbor, carrying Lord de la Warr and fresh supplies and labor.

Hopkins stayed in the colony several years, but stories about their horrific shipwreck made it back to England. William Shakespeare told the story in “The Tempest,” which premiered in November 1611.

Mary kept the family going back in England, working as a shopkeeper; and perhaps with help from some of Hopkins’ wages from his position as clerk to the colony’s pastor. She died in May 1613. Word of her death didn’t reach Jamestown until September 1614. Hopkins returned to London to assume care of his orphaned children.

A Second Hopkins Family

In February 1617/18 he married Elizabeth Fisher. Their daughter, Damaris was born about a year later. The harrowing experiences of his first trip to North America did not dissuade him from wanting to return. When he learned a group of Pilgrims planned to establish another colony in Northern Virginia, he decided to go with them. This time he took his entire family, which now consisted of his children Constance and Giles born to his first wife, Mary; his second wife Elizabeth, their daughter Damaris, and two servants, Edward Doty and Edward Leister. His daughter Elizabeth died before this opportunity came along. His wife Elizabeth was pregnant with another child.

Though several of the crew had traveled to the New World before, Hopkins was the only passenger with prior knowledge of the place. His knowledge of both the inhabitants and the land must have fascinated the other Mayflower passengers on the long journey. Elizabeth gave birth to a son while the ship was still at sea. The Hopkins named the child Oceanus, in honor of his birthplace.

Assuming Leadership

Though Hopkins was not a member of the Separatist community, he was an integral part of the community that formed when the Mayflower arrived in Cape Cod, 400 miles north of her intended destination at the mouth of the Hudson River. He went on exploration trips to find a suitable place to create Plymouth Plantation. When the Wampanoag Sachem Ousamequin (Massasoit) called on the new settlers in March 1621, Hopkins opened his new house to some of them. Later he traveled with settlers to visit the Natives in their community.

Apparently the community considered him a respected leader, given he served as an assistant to the governor through 1636. That year he got in a fight and wounded his opponent. The next year he was fined for allowing people to drink and play shuffleboard on the Sabbath. In 1638 and 1639 he was fined for selling things at double the normal cost.

He had a maidservant who was impregnated by Arthur Perch in 1638. The community executed Perch for murdering a Native, as per the terms of the 1621 treaty between the Plymouth Plantation settlers and the Wampanoag leaders. The Plymouth Court declared Hopkins financially responsible for his servant until she completed her term of service to him in two years. He refused and threw her out of the house. The situation was resolved when someone else purchased the servant’s remaining time from Hopkins.

Stephen Hopkins’ adventures and troubles ended when he died in 1644 and was buried next to his wife, Elizabeth, in Cove Burying Ground in Eastham, MA.

Information for this blog comes in part from The Mayflower and Her Passengers, by Caleb Johnson, Mayflower History web site, and Mayflower.americanancestors.org. If you’d like to know more about the adventures of Stephen Hopkins you can read all about it in Caleb Johnson’s Here Shall I Die Ashore. You may also enjoy reading Pilgrim and Native Peace Talks or Mayflower Governor John Carver.

Thank you for taking time to read about Stephen Hopkins’ amazing adventures. I hope you found it interesting and inspiring. How about sharing it with a friend? If you got this from a friend, you can get your own FREE subscription at HowWiseThen. I’m currently giving away tips for recognizing and coping with dementia in memory and honor of my older brother who passed away recently after struggling with dementia issues for several years.

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