Everything about Mark Hopkins Railroad totally explained
Mark Hopkins, Junior (
September 1 1813 –
March 29 1878) was one of four principal investors who formed the
Central Pacific Railroad along with
Leland Stanford,
Charles Crocker, and
Collis Huntington in
1861.
Early life
Hopkins was born in
Henderson, New York to Mark Hopkins, Senior and Anastasia Lukens Kellogg (who were first cousins). The family relocated to St. Claire,
Michigan. Hopkins Senior died in 1828, and Hopkins Junior left school to work as a clerk. In 1837 he studied law with his brother Henry, but moved on through several business ventures. He was a partner in a firm called "Hopkins and Hughes", then a bookkeeper and later manager for "James Rowland and Company".
The Family moved to St. Clair, Michigan in 1824. His father Mark Hopkins (1779-1828) served as St. Clair's first postmaster.
California
When the
California Gold Rush began, Hopkins formed the "New England Mining and Trading Company", a group of 26 men each of whom invested $500 to purchase goods and ship them to California for sale. On January 22, 1849 Hopkins left
New York City on the ship
Pacific. After rounding
Cape Horn, the ship arrived in San Francisco on August 5, 1849.
Hopkins opened a store in
Placerville, California but it didn't succeed and he relocated to
Sacramento where he opened a
wholesale grocery in 1850 with his friend Edward H. Miller. Miller would later be secretary of the Central Pacific Railroad.
On September 22, 1854 in New York City, Hopkins married his first cousin,
Mary Frances Sherwood (sometimes spelled Mary Francis Sherwood). Though his background was
Congregationalist, the wedding was at a
Presbyterian Church.
In 1855, Hopkins and Collis P. Huntington formed "Huntington Hopkins and Company" to operate a hardware and iron business in Sacramento.
In 1861, as part of
The Big Four, he founded the Central Pacific Railroad. Sometimes called "Uncle Mark", he was the eldest of the four partners and was well known for his thriftiness (it was said that he knew how to "squeeze 106 cents out of every dollar"), a reputation that gained him the post of company treasurer. A historian named Bancroft quotes Collis Huntington as saying "I never thought anything finished until Hopkins looked at it". Bancroft described Hopkins as the "balance-wheel of the Associates and one of the truest and best men that ever lived." A
Whig and later associated with the
Free Soil Party, Hopkins was an
Abolitionist and an organizer of the
Republican Party in California.
Despite his thriftiness, his wife managed eventually to persuade him to build an ornate mansion at the top of
Nob Hill in San Francisco, California, close to the mansions of other Central Pacific founders. The construction commenced in 1875. The project manager was architectural engineer
William Wallace Barbour Sheldon, who worked for Hopkins under the Southern Pacific Improvement Company.
By then Hopkins was having health problems, and died aboard a company train near
Yuma, Arizona in 1878, the house not yet completed. Eventually finished and occupied by Mary, the structure burned to the ground in a fire caused by the
1906 San Francisco earthquake. The Mark Hopkins Hotel (currently
InterContinental Mark Hopkins San Francisco) was built in its place in 1926.
See
Mark Hopkins Mansion
Legacy
Mark and Mary Hopkins didn't have any children, and Hopkins died
without having left a will. After Mark Hopkins' death, his estate passed to Mary, who adopted her housekeeper's adult son, Timothy Nolan, who thus became Timothy Hopkins. Mary later disinherited Timothy Hopkins, and went on to marry
Edward Francis Searles. After her death, Timothy sued for and was awarded some of the estate, but the bulk of it passed to Searles.
Hopkins is buried in Old Sacramento City Cemetery in
Sacramento, California.
Sources
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