Stephen Hopkins

A passenger on the Mayflower in 1620, and the father of Constance (Hopkins) Snow. Bradford’s list: “Mr. Steven Hopkins, & Elizabeth, his wife, and 2. children, caled Giles, and Constanta, a doughter, both by a former wife; and 2. more by this wife, caled Damaris & Oceanus; the last was borne at sea; and 2. servants, called Edward Doty and Edward Litster” (source).

On Cape Cod, in the first weeks, he went with the armed party that Myles Standish led ashore on 15 Nov 1620, “vnto whom was adioyned for counsell and advise, William Bradford, Stephen Hopkins, and Edward Tilley,” and with the ten men in the shallop on 6 December, among “three of London, Richard Warren, Steeuen Hopkins, and Edward [Doten],” who met the First Encounter two days later and sounded Plymouth harbour (source). On the first march it was he who explained an Indian deer trap they came upon, “Stephen Hopkins sayd, it had beene to catch some Deere,” just before Bradford, coming up behind, set it off and “was immediately caught by the leg.” When Samoset walked into the settlement in March 1621 and would not leave at nightfall, “we lodged him that night at Steven Hopkins house, and watched him.” In July 1621 the colony sent “Mr. Edward Winslow & Mr. Hopkins, with ye foresaid Squanto for ther guid” to Massasoit, forty miles inland, with “a suite of cloaths, and a horsemans coate”; they “found but short commons, and came both weary & hungrie home.” Bradford’s summary, about 1651: “Mr. Hopkins and his wife are now both dead, but they lived above 20. years in this place, and had one sone and 4. doughters borne here … But his sone Giles is maried, and hath 4. children. His doughter Constanta is also maried, and hath 12. children, all of them living, and one of them maried.”

He is an ancestor of the Ellingwoods through Constance, her daughter Ruth (Snow) Cole and the Coles of Eastham, down to Hope (Holdershaw) Ellingwood (probable at the Snow-Cole step). Richard Warren and John Tilley, his companions in the shallop, are ancestors in this archive too, on Frances Holbrook’s side.

Research: research/ellingwood/Ellingwood_Cape_Cod.md.