Sacramento-San Francisco County CA Archives Biographies.....Hopkins, Mark September 1, 1813 - March 29, 1878
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Ila Wakley iwakley@msn.com October 30, 2010, 3:40 pm

Source: California and Californians, Vol. IV, Published 1932, Page 95
Author: The Lewis Publishing Company

     MARK HOPKINS was born at Henderson, New York, September 1, 1813, and came 
of New England stock. His namesake, Mark Hopkins, was a noted educator. At 
sixteen his father died and he went to work in a store, later he studied law, 
and then became a salesman for a new type of plow which a friend had invented, 
and in this work traveled extensively and gained wide commercial experience.

     When it became a certainty that gold had been discovered in California he 
came by way of Cape Horn and arrived in 1849. After some months in San 
Francisco, studying the commercial possibilities of the new country, with a 
few associates, he purchased a large boat, loaded it with supplies and started 
up the Sacramento River to the mouth of Cottonwood Creek, in Shasta County. 
Because conditions there did not look promising, Mr. Hopkins returned to 
Sacramento.

     For some time he was engaged in hauling supplies from Sacramento to 
Placerville, and later became a merchant in Sacramento. He was very successful 
and invested in real estate. Later he became the partner of Collis P. 
Huntington, and both men became prominent in public life. After the fire of 
1852, which destroyed Sacramento, they were active in relief work and 
rebuilding the city.

     It was in the Hopkins & Huntington store that many important meetings 
were held. The building of the Central Pacific Railway was first discussed 
there, and Hopkins is credited with testing each step in its organization with 
his logical and legal mind. Huntington was the financial genius; Leland 
Stanford, the political spokesman and diplomat; Crocker the superintendent of 
construction; but Hopkins was the judicious counsellor without whom the work 
of the others would have been ill-directed.

     As a man Mark Hopkins hated injustice of all kinds. He was an ardent 
abolitionist at a time when that cause won more enemies than friends. During 
the last years of his life he suffered from continual illness. Hoping for 
relief, he went to Yuma, Arizona, where he died March 29, 1878.

     His widow carried on his extensive philanthropic work, and some Years 
later married a Mr. Searles, of New Hampshire. Upon the death of the former 
Mrs. Hopkins, Mr. Searles founded the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art in the old 
Hopkins residence, in California Street. The institute was richly endowed and 
made a part of the University of California.

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