Biographical Sketch of Thomas HOOPES (1893); Chester County, PA Contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by John Morris . *********************************************************************** USGENWEB ARCHIVES NOTICE: Printing this file within by non-commercial individuals and libraries is encouraged, as long as all notices and submitter information is included. Any other use, including copying files to other sites requires permission from the submitters PRIOR to uploading to any other sites. We encourage links to the state and county table of contents. http://www.usgwarchives.net/ *********************************************************************** Source: "Biographical and Portrait Cyclopedia of Chester County, Pennsylvania, comprising a historical sketch of the county", by Samuel T. Wiley and edited by Winfield Scott Garner, Gresham Publishing Company, Philadelphia, PA, 1893, pp. 355-6. "THOMAS HOOPES, an able business man of many years successful experience, and a member of the well known firm Hoopes, Brother & Darlington, who own and operate the largest wheel factory east of the Allegheny mountains, is a son of Thomas, Sr., and Elizabeth (Darlington) Hoopes, and was born in West Goshen township, Chester county, Pennsylvania, November 27, 1834. The Hoopes family is among the oldest and most respectable families of Pennsylvania, and was founded in 1683 in Bucks county by Joshua Hoopes, who, with his wife Isabel, came in that year from Cleveland in Yorkshire, England. They brought with them their three children: Daniel, Margaret and Christian. Daniel Hoopes came to Westtown town- ship in 1696, and on December 10th of that year, he married Jane Worrilow, daughter of Thomas and Jane Worrilow, of Edgmont. His son, Thomas Hoopes (great-grandfather) was born October 22, 1714, and settled on a portion of the six hundred and thirty acre tract of land in Goshen township, which his father had purchased from a sea captain, who had bought it from the Penns. He was a farmer by occupation, and died May 21, 1803, aged eighty-nine years. He married Susanna Davies, and after her death, Amy Cope. A son by his second marriage was Jesse Cope (grandfather), who died in 1825. One of his sons was Thomas Hoopes, Sr. (father), born in 1794, on the old homestead, where he died in May, 1880, at eighty-six years of age. He was a farmer by occupation, and a member of the Society of Friends. He was a useful man, and a Whig and republican in politics, and in 1816, married Eliza Darlington, who was born in 1797, and passed away in 1878, when in the eighty-first year of her age. Mr. and Mrs. Hoopes had nine children, seven sons and two daughters. "Thomas Hoopes grew to manhood on the paternal acres, and received his education in the public and high schools of West Chester. At the early age of sixteen years he commenced farming, which he followed until he was twenty-three, when he went west, where he was engaged for five years in Colorado and Iowa in mining and the lumber business. At the end of that time, in 1862, he returned to Chester county and was engaged in farming until 1868, when he removed with his brother William to West Chester, and organized the present celebrated West Chester spoke and wheel manufacturing firm of Hoopes, Bro. & Darlington. Their plant, which is known as the West Chester wheel works, occupies three acres of ground, on which are erected large and commodious frame and brick buildings, embracing engine house, work shops, finishing factory, and a neat and tasteful office building. The company has 100,000 square feet of floor surface in their buildings. They employ from one hundred and fifty to two hundred men, and have an output of forty thousand sets of wheels per year. Mr. Hoopes' is one of the leading industrial establishments of the eastern part of the State, and he has made for himself a name as an honorable and first class manufacturer in the many different sections of the State and country where the products of his works are used. "On June 14, 1864, Mr. Hoopes was united in marriage with Amanda Russell, daughter of Thomas Russell, of the city of Baltimore. To their union have been born six children, five sons and one daughter: Charles R., who is in charge of the office of Hoopes, Brother & Darlington; William, superintendent of the Bala & Merion Electric Company; Herbert, deceased; Maurice, superintendent of the electric light plant of West Chester; Arthur, now a student in Edison's labor- atory at Orange, New Jersey; and Emily. "Thomas Hoopes is a republican, and has cast his vote for every presidential candidate of that party since its organization in 1856. He is interested in the industrial progress and general prosperity of his native city, and has served for some time as the president of the board of trade. His time and attention are chiefly given to the extensive business which has been built up during the last quarter of a century. He is now in the line of his proper life-work, and the results of his labor are those of substantial success, as attested by the existence of the splendidly equipped factory and extensive trade over a wide area of territory. He is modest and reserved, yet affable and pleasant. Mr. Hoopes' success and reputation have come, not as the result of accident, but as the fruits of excellence of work and special ability of management."