5TH GENERATION THOMAS JEFFERSON JR. AND SARAH MARGARET WALTER HOPSON

6^th generation

Thomas Jefferson Hopson, Sr.

(1879-1956)[1]

Sarah Margaret Walter

(1884-1971)

(her biography follows this one)

Page from Thomas J. Hopson Sr.’s Bible:

Parents

Photos:

Thomas J. Hopson Sr. 1905

Thomas & Maggie Hopson 1923

Thomas J. & Sarah Margaret Walter Hopson 1948

Thomas Jefferson Hopson was born November 13, 1879, at East Point, Floyd County, Kentucky[2], the fifth of ten children of Littleton W. Hopson and Delilia Musick Hopson[3]. He married Sarah Margaret Walter, daughter of Daniel Webster Walter and Marietta Strausbaugh Walter, on November 22, 1905, in Huntington, Cabell County, West Virginia[4], and seven children were born of this marriage:

i. Edith Margaret, born August 10, 1906, at Camden-on-Gauley, WV; m. Kester Epling (1897-1970) March 8, 1930, 3 children; d. September 1975).

ii. Olive Mae, born October 13, 1908, at Kincaid, WV; m. Harry Boyd on March 4, 1934; m. Paul Browning (1904-1994) February 18, 1955; no children; d. 1991

iii. Ruth Mary, born September 19, 1910, at Logansport, WV; m. William Bailey (1911-1980), October 8, 1932, 4 children; d. 1987.

iv. Mabel, born November 5, 1912, Ashland, Kentucky; d. June 1913.

v. Thomas Jefferson, Jr., born March 23, 1915 at Rupert, WV. (m. Beulah Ransdell (1916-1996) daughter of Gilbert Sterling Ransdell and Agatha Mattingly Ransdell, on February 21, 1940; 6 children; d. May 2, 1983.

vi. Carl Daniel, born November 11, 1916, at Parkersburg, WV; m. (1) Frances Cooper, January 14, 1938, 1 child; divorced; m. 26 Apr 1941 Willie Jean Carlson (1921-1996), 1 child; d. 15 July 1988 Lexington, KY.

vii. Gail Joy, born October 12, 1923, at Elkins, WV; m. (1913-LIVING) March 21, 1945; 5 children; d. Jan. 12, 1994.[5] [6]

Pages from Thomas J. Hopson Sr.’s Bible:

Births, Marriages, Deaths

Photo: Ruth Hopson Bailey, Thomas J. Hopson, Jr., Edith Hopson Epling, Olive Hopson Browning, Carl D. Hopson, Gail Hopson Metheny 1971

Thomas was a Methodist minister for 45 years[7], and died on February 14, 1956, in Cincinnati, Ohio. Burial was at Ashland Cemetery, Ashland, Kentucky.

* * * * * *

The son of a poor farmer in East Point, Floyd County, Kentucky, Thomas was influenced by his mother to get an education and study for the ministry. He attended rural schools in East Point, but for the equivalent of high school, he had to board at the Prestonsburg Normal School in Prestonsburg, Kentucky. His daughter Ruth Hopson Bailey recalled her father’s telling her his family had been terribly poor, almost starving some of the time. It was all Littleton and Delilia Hopson could do to keep food on the table for their ten children, and they had to struggle all their lives.

Ruth recalled a story told by her father about himself and his older brother George. They were close as children, but they did their share of fighting, as brothers will do. One day while rolling around on the ground in a real fist fight, they felt a switch coming down on their bare legs -- their father had gotten into the act. They were good-sized boys at the time and they were so angry at being whipped, they both ran away and stayed gone for two weeks, worrying their mother to death.

According to the Memoir in the West Virginia Conference Journal, Thomas was converted and joined the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in 1900, at the age of 20. He was licensed to preach in 1901. He then went to Morris Harvey College, then in Barboursville, Cabell County, West Virginia, and graduated with a Bachelor of Pedagogy degree in 1904. Only three other people were in his graduating class.[8]

He was known at Morris Harvey as the “Sunbeam Preacher,” because he had been the recipient of a scholarship from a children’s missionary group (8 to 12-year-olds) who collected their pennies to educate a preacher.

At the time he went into the ministry, the Methodist Church was split into the Methodist Episcopal Church, North, and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. This split had occurred in 1844 over the issue of slavery. Thomas began his ministry in the Episcopal Church, South, with the following charges:

1904-05: East Bank (Kanawha County). During this period he was invited to preach at a revival by one Reverend Daniel W. Walter, and he boarded at Rev. Walter’s home while he was in town. Thomas noticed Rev. Walter’s pretty daughter Maggie who was playing the piano and organ. He told his daughter Ruth that one of the church members actually took him aside and pointed Maggie out to him, saying she would be just right for a preacher’s wife. He gave it a lot of thought, and after he left to return to his own circuit, he started writing letters to Maggie. He even asked her to marry him in a letter, and in 1904 he and Maggie were married in Huntington, Cabell County, West Virginia.

1905-06: Webster Circuit (Webster County). Here Thomas and Maggie’s first child, Edith Margaret, was born. Being assigned to a “circuit” meant that he had the responsibility for several small rural churches, none of which was able to afford its own minister. Depending on the distance between them, he might have to travel to several churches each Sunday to preach, or he might go to some churches on alternate Sundays.

1906-07: Matewan Circuit (Mingo County). Matewan was the center of the Hatfield and McCoy feud, and he may have felt that he wasn’t getting anywhere. So he transferred to the Methodist Episcopal Church, North, for four years:

1907-08: Montgomery (Fayette County) (Olive was born here).

1908-10: Logansport (Marion County) (Ruth was born here).

1910-11: Farmington (Marion County).

The family is found in the 1910 West Virginia census, in Fayette Co., as follows: Thomas Hopson 30, Maggie 25, Edith 3, Olive NR [she would be one year old].

It was in about 1910 that Thomas’s mother, Delilia Musick Hopson, died. From the pulpit, he frequently referred to his “sainted mother,” and to the fact that he had had to leave home to study for the ministry, and never saw her alive again.

In 1911, he returned to the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and held the following charges:

1911-14: Ashland Centenary (Boyd County, KY). Here their fourth child, Mabel, was born and died only six months later.

1914-15: Rupert Circuit (Greenbrier Co., WV). Here their first son, Thomas Jefferson, Jr., was born.

1915-16: Ripley (Jackson Co., WV).

1916-18: Parkersburg Liberty Street (Wood Co., WV). Here their second son, Carl Daniel, was born.

1918-19: Pikeville, Kentucky (Pike Co.) While he lived in Pikeville, his widowed father, Littleton W. Hopson, came to live in his home, and he died there.

1919-20: Webster Springs, West Virginia (Webster Co.)

The family appears in the 1920 West Virginia census in Webster County as follows: Thomas J. Hopson 40, Margaret 35, Edith 13, Olive 11, Ruth 9, Thomas J. 4, and Carl 3.

1920-22: Monongah Circuit (Marion Co., WV).

1922-25: Elkins Circuit (Randolph Co., WV). Gail, the youngest child, was born here.

1925-29: Fayetteville Circuit (Fayette Co., WV).

In 1928 Morris P. Shawkey, President of Marshall College, wrote a History of West Virginia, and on page 99 is the biography of Rev. Thomas J. Hopson, pastor of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, at Fayetteville, who "began his preparation for the ministry in early manhood, and has had a continuous service of twenty years in the Western Virginia Conference."

The biography told a little about his parents (although the statement about his mother being born and reared in Scott County, VA was in error), his brothers and sisters and their spouses. After a few sentences about his education, the biography says, "Rev. Mr. Hopson is a man of earnest convictions, forceful, eloquent, a sincere and sympathetic worker, and has been a valued citizen of the different communities where he has served as pastor.... In 1924 he was assigned as pastor of the church at Fayetteville, where he has enjoyed a congenial relationship for the past four years and gained the love and respect of all members of his community. He is an independent Democrat in politics."

1929-33: Mount Hope (Fayette Co., WV). Here is where Edith married Kester Epling on March 8, 1930, just before she graduated from Morris Harvey College with a B.A. on June 1, 1930. Ruth, the only one who didn’t go on to college or further training, married Bill Bailey in l932.

Thomas had begun his ministry in 1904 at a salary of $500 per year. By 1929 in Fayetteville he had reached $2500 per year. Then the Depression hit, and the salary decreased from $2400 in 1929 and 1930, to $2000 in 1931, to $1500 in 1932. It was 1935 before his salary rose to $1600 and slowly continued increasing.

Life for the Hopsons revolved around the church and the family. All of the children have fond memories of their father. Gail Hopson Metheny, the youngest, shared her recollections:

“Dad seemed tall to me, but I don’t know his actual height. He had black, bright eyes, and was thin. He had a quick temper but was soon sorry after he ‘exploded.’ He had a strong belief and faith in God, believed in education, believed in his country, and was a staunch Democrat. He was raised a poor boy and was prejudiced against spending money foolishly. He preached good and interesting sermons, and I was proud of him. He may have spoiled me as I was the baby of the family. I only remember him spanking me once, when I was six, and had run off late at night to play with some neighborhood children, and he apologized to me afterwards. I loved him dearly.”

Olive’s memories of her father were quite similar: “Dad was very handsome (I think) with dark hair and eyes when he was young, probably about five feet, ten inches tall. He was friendly and outgoing, also outspoken when he didn’t agree with someone. He liked to joke, especially with visitors, other ministers, and his brother.”

Thomas spent three years on the Elkins circuit, then four years (1925-29) on the Fayetteville Circuit (Fayette County), then four years in Mount Hope (1929-33) (Fayette County). Those are the years that his children recall with the most clarity, the years when they were growing up as the “preacher’s kids.”

Carl generously shared his memories of some of those days. “When Dad was serving the Fayetteville church he had what was termed a ‘circuit’ -- consisting of several rural churches besides the main church in Fayetteville. When the rural dirt roads were impassable at times, Dad found it necessary to travel by horseback. On one memorable occasion, Tom and I talked Dad into letting us go with him. We borrowed an Indian pony from the same man who loaned Dad the large horse.

“On Sunday, we saddled up -- Dad on the horse and Tom and I on the red Indian pony. We went well for about the first three miles, when suddenly the pony decided he didn’t like his load, and threw Tom and me over his head onto a muddy, hard road. We were able to hold onto the reins and remounted, at Dad’s insistence. On again, off again. So Dad said he would have to proceed on his way to church or be late, and ordered us to walk the pony back to its owner.

“Methodist preachers were famous for their ‘chicken eating’ when they were preaching away from home at one of their several circuit charges. Dad enjoyed this eating out, as did Mom, but since Dad was a quick eater and Mom was a very, very slow eater, she would stop eating when the preacher did even though she was far from through. After some, perhaps many times, of going away from the host’s table still quite hungry, she finally got up enough nerve to say, ‘Mr. Hopson, if you don’t start eating slower when we’re invited out, I’m going to starve to death!’ She said it helped some.

“At one home they ate at, the table was loaded down with chicken. The family and Dad and Mom were seated around the table. As was the custom, the hostess gave the visiting minister the first choice of the chicken. As the platter worked its way around the table, the hostess came to her small son and asked him which piece of chicken he wanted. The small lad said loud and clear that he wanted the piece the preacher got! The mother tried to hush the kid before the visitors heard him, but Dad had heard it. I asked Dad what he did and he said he just kept right on eating -- like he hadn’t heard a thing! A wise man!”

His son and namesake, Tom, Jr., recalls that his father spoke often, especially from the pulpit, about the poverty of his early life. “Dad could never forget what it was like to be a poor farmer’s son, and it took a lot of determination to rise from that life of poverty to the profession of minister. I think it was his mother who influenced him to get an education, and then he in turn influenced his younger brother Bill. I don’t think he ever saw his mother alive again after he left home to go to college. He was on a scholarship (and I think that ‘Sunbeam Preacher’ nickname kind of embarrassed him), and he wouldn’t have been able to afford to travel home once he got to college, then he got married and started raising a family. His mother died in about 1910, and I can remember him talking about her in some of his sermons. He called her ‘his sainted mother’ and he would say he had to leave her to go away to school and become a preacher. He would probably have been very proud if she could have seen and heard him preaching, but I don’t think she ever did.

“Dad was a great believer in education. He wanted every one of us to go to college, and five of us did, mostly because of his encouragement and insistence. Of course, it had been a struggle for him, graduating from college and entering a respected profession, and he was bound and determined that his sons were going to follow in his footsteps. There just wasn’t any question that both Carl and I would study for the ministry. It was a mistake for both of us, and eventually Dad came to accept that.”

Ruth remembers that her father was a stern disciplinarian when it came to the three older girls, but she thinks he spoiled the two boys and Gail, the baby. The two “boys” didn’t agree with her, as both of them recalled a number of times they had felt their father’s wrath.

The moving continued:

1933-37: Parkersburg Wesley (Wood Co., WV). Olive had a year or two of college and did some school teaching, then worked for the government for many years. She married Harry Boyd in 1934, but he died only a few years later.

1937-39: Guyandotte (Cabell Co., WV). Carl married Frances Cooper in 1938 in Paintsville, Floyd Co., Kentucky.)

In 1939, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and the Methodist Episcopal Church, North, were reunited to form the Methodist Church. Because Thomas was in the Ashland District, he was cut off into the Kentucky conference:

1939-40: Erlanger, Kentucky (Kenton Co.). Here is where Tom, my father, met and married Beulah Ransdell, my mother, on February 21, 1940.

1940-42: Louisa, Kentucky (Lawrence Co.). Here is where Carl met and married his second wife, Jean Carlson, in 1942.

1942-43: Cold Springs, Kentucky (Kenton Co.)

At this point, Thomas and his son Tom who had entered the ministry in 1939, agreed to exchange churches so that Thomas, Sr., could return to West Virginia, and Thomas, Jr., could go to Kentucky.

1943-45: Fairmont, West Virginia (Marion Co.). Gail, the youngest child, chose to go to a business school rather than college; she left home to work as a secretary in Washington, D.C., during World War II. She married in 1945.

1945-48: Omar, West Virginia (Logan Co.).

1948-49: Ceredo, West Virginia (Wayne Co.).

In September 1949, Thomas retired after 45 years in the ministry, at the age of 70. He and his wife bought a small house at 4201 Earl Street, Ashland, Kentucky (Boyd Co.), near their son Carl and his family, where they lived their last years.

Personal recollections of his granddaughter, Jane Hopson McClure:

Our family visited Grandmother and Granddaddy every summer -- a hot and tiring trip on those old roads in a very crowded car. The food Grandmother prepared was often fresh from Granddaddy’s garden, which he was so proud of. In the evenings, after we had gone to bed, Daddy, Carl, and Granddaddy would stay up late talking far into the night. Granddaddy baptized each of my sisters, my brother, and me. I especially remember how very proud he was of his only Hopson grandson, my brother and his namesake, Thomas Jefferson Hopson, III.

My mother told me years after his death that she had never liked her father-in-law. He was too overbearing and arrogant for her. What bothered her the most was the way he took credit for how smart her children were! Also, she said he believed there would be nobody in heaven but Methodists and Democrats.

We went to Grandmother and Granddaddy’s 50th anniversary celebration over the Thanksgiving weekend of 1955. The entire family got together for the event, and I remember seeing relatives there that I had never seen before -- or since. Or if I had seen them before, I didn’t remember them. The big anniversary dinner was held in Carl and Jean’s downstairs recreation room. Gail’s husband, who was in the restaurant business, cooked the huge turkey all night long. After the delicious meal, Grandmother and Granddaddy opened their gifts.

Granddaddy wasn’t in the best of health. He had had a mild stroke one day while out working in his yard -- not too serious, but enough to worry him. I recall him talking quite a bit about his health while we were there that weekend.

About a month later, a day or two after Christmas, Carl called Daddy to say that Granddaddy had suffered another stroke and was seriously ill. Carl wanted to bring him to Cincinnati to the hospital. Over New Year’s weekend, Daddy drove to Ashland and brought Grandmother and Granddaddy home with him. Grandmother stayed with us and Granddaddy was admitted to Christ Hospital in Cincinnati. The effects of the stroke had left him in very poor condition; he didn’t know where he was, and he didn’t know anyone.

He was transferred to the Cincinnati Sanitarium and given electric shock treatments. I remember Daddy going over there to shave him and visit with him, coming home very sad because his father didn’t know him and was so ill.

On February 14, 1956, we came home from school with our Valentines to find Daddy at home -- rarest of events. He told us Granddaddy had died that morning.

Mom told me later that the hospital had called her that morning to tell her Granddaddy had had a fatal heart attack during a shock treatment. Mom had to break the news to Grandmother, which must have been very difficult for her. Mom called Daddy at work to tell him, and he came right home.

Maggie and her son Tom returned to Ashland for the funeral. Thomas was buried in the Ashland Cemetery.

The Memoir in the 1956 Methodist Conference Journal states: “He preached the gospel of Christ in such a way that many were converted and added to the church.... He is not dead, he is just away.”

Sources of information:

Thomas J. Hopson Sr. Family Bible (in my possession): Parents, Births,

Marriages, Deaths

Letters from and conversations with his widow, Sarah Margaret Walter

Hopson (1884-1971)

Conversations with his son, Thomas J. Hopson, Jr. (1915-1983)

Letters from and conversations with his daughter, Ruth Hopson Bailey (1910-

1987)

Conversations with his daughter-in-law, Beulah Ransdell Hopson (1916-1996)

Letters from his son Carl Hopson (1916-1988) and

daughters Olive Browning (1908-1991) and

Gail Metheny (1923-1994).

Morris P. Shawkey: History of West Virginia, 1928, p. 99.

Sarah Margaret Walter

(1884-1971)

Photo:

Sarah Margaret Walter Hopson 1905

Sarah Margaret Walter (called Maggie) was born August 24, 1884, in Mineral Point, Cambria County, Pennsylvania, the second of four children of Daniel Webster Walter (see WALTER) and Marietta Strausbaugh Walter. (see STRAUSBAUGH) She married the Reverend Thomas Jefferson Hopson on November 22, 1905, in Huntington, West Virginia, and became the mother of seven children. She died on July 21, 1971[9], in Ashland, Boyd County, Kentucky, and is buried beside her husband at the Ashland Cemetery, Ashland, Kentucky.

* * * * * *

Sarah Margaret (Maggie) Walter was born in the little riverside town of Mineral Point, Pennsylvania, about five miles north of Johnstown. Maggie told her daughter Ruth that her family, while not well to do, had been comfortable and lived in pleasant homes when she was a child.

When she was not quite five years old, the catastrophic Johnstown Flood occurred, and Maggie was carried from the path of the rushing waters in the arms of her father. She and her parents, her seven-year-old sister Mary Elizabeth (Lizzie), and a younger sister, Anna May, survived the flood, but lost their home and all their belongings. (See Daniel Webster Walter’s biography for a complete account of the flood.)

During the years of rebuilding after the flood, Marietta Walter gave birth to their only son, Elmer Jacob.

Maggie probably started school in Johnstown and attended other schools in various other Pennsylvania communities, including Apollo in Westmoreland County.

When Maggie was 16, her father moved the family to West Virginia where he became a full-time minister in the Methodist Church. Their first home in West Virginia was in Hamlin in Lincoln County. Maggie took a business course and did some office work in Huntington, West Virginia.

Maggie played both the piano and the organ for her father’s church. She was a pretty, blue-eyed blond with a lovely figure, very quiet and shy, according to her daughter, Olive Hopson Browning. In the beginning of her father’s preaching career, he was assigned to the Dingess circuit in Mingo County, a remote mountain area. Then in 1902 he went to Kanawha County, where for the next few years he served such circuits as St. Albans, Marmet, and Reed.

Maggie’s sister Lizzie married Frank Inghram in October 1904. About this time, her father invited a young preacher, a recent graduate of Morris Harvey College, to preach a revival for him. Rev. Thomas Jefferson Hopson was serving the East Bank circuit in Kanawha County. He boarded with the Walter family while preaching the revival, and later he admitted that the first thing he noticed about the organist was her “pretty neck.”

Maggie told her daughter Ruth that a young, single preacher such as Mr. Hopson was immediately the object of the attentions of all the young unmarried girls in town. One of them in particular would follow the “little preacher” as they called him -- not because he was little, but because he was so young -- whenever he left the house to walk to the post office or whatever. But Maggie didn’t follow him; she thought it was foolish of the girls who did so. For that matter, there was another young man who was interested in her.

But after the Reverend Mr. Hopson left their community to return to his own churches, he started writing her letters, and in fact, he proposed marriage to her in a letter. She decided that she didn’t really care much for the other young man after all. They were married November 22, 1905, in Huntington, West Virginia. She told her daughter Edith that she was married in a green chambray dress with mutton sleeves. She is wearing that dress in a photograph taken not long after their marriage.

Even though Maggie’s father was a minister, he did not perform their wedding ceremony. I questioned Joseph Inghram, Maggie’s nephew and Daniel’s grandson, about this. He said it just wasn’t customary for ministers to perform weddings for their own daughters. He didn’t think there was any animosity between the two men of God -- but he thought Dan Walter “knew she was condemning herself to a diet of fried chicken and mashed potatoes,” by marrying the young Reverend Hopson.

They went to live in Camden-on-Gauley in Webster County, and there in August 1906, nine months after their marriage as no doubt everyone carefully counted, their first child Edith Margaret was born. Shortly thereafter, they went to the Matewan circuit for a year, and then to Montgomery, where in October 1908, their second daughter, Olive Mae, was born. Then to Logansport where a third daughter, Ruth Mary, was born in September 1910, and then to Farmington for a year.

From 1911 to 1914, Thomas Hopson was assigned to the large Centenary Church at Ashland, Kentucky, but there the great tragedy of their lives occurred: a baby girl, named Mabel, was born November 5, 1912, and only seven months later, in June 1913, she died.

Then they went back to West Virginia, to the Rupert circuit in Greenbrier County, where their long-awaited first son was born on March 23, 1915: Thomas Jefferson Hopson, Jr. Then they went to Ripley for a year, then to the Liberty Street church in Parkersburg, where in November 1916, another son, Carl Daniel (named after Maggie’s father, Daniel Walter) came along.

Moves were frequent -- in 1918, they went to Pikeville, Kentucky, where in addition to five children, Maggie had the care of her husband’s father, Littleton W. Hopson, until his death the following year. Then back to West Virginia -- to Webster Springs, to Monongah, to Elkins, where the baby of the family, Gail Joy, was born in October 1923. Then Fayetteville, Mount Hope, Parkersburg, Guyandotte, West Virginia; then Erlanger, Louisa, and Cold Springs, Kentucky.

Her daughter Olive remembers that Maggie seemed to enjoy moving from one pastorate to another. “I never knew of Mother objecting when Dad felt they should move on, or the conference so decided. She loved her children and husband and probably spoiled us. People at each church loved her. She sewed, crocheted, embroidered, canned, helped with the garden, played with her children. She loved going riding with Dad or going on picnics.”

Her son Tom told a story of one particular ride that he would never forget. The entire family was in the car, his father driving, of course, and his mother in the front seat holding Gail, the baby, on her lap. The car stalled while sitting on a railroad track. Maggie, fearing a train would come, immediately jumped out of the car with the baby, and waited until her husband got the car started again and safely off the tracks. Then she got back inside. Tom said he and the other kids never let her forget that she had abandoned all of them, but she said she knew she couldn’t save them all, but she could save one, so she did.

In 1943, Thomas and Maggie Hopson returned to West Virginia, where they spent two years in Fairmont, three years in Omar, then the last year of his ministry in Ceredo. In September 1949, he retired from the ministry and bought a house in Ashland, Kentucky. Thomas was 70, Maggie was 65. Their son Carl and his wife Jean lived in Ashland too, and for the years to come, Carl and Jean did all they could for his parents, to make their lives pleasant and comfortable.

Photo: The Ashland House

As her children grew up and married, they tended to settle in far-flung places: Edith in West Virginia; Olive, Tom, and Carl in widely scattered parts of Kentucky; Ruth in Virginia; Gail in Illinois. Maggie and Thomas saw them perhaps once or twice a year when they could come for a few days, bringing their families.

I remember our visits to Grandmother and Granddaddy’s house each summer. There were eight in our family, and though we kept getting bigger, the car didn’t. This was before the interstate expressways were built, and the trip to Ashland from our home in Covington took four or five hours, depending on whether anyone got carsick, as they usually did, traveling those winding Kentucky roads.

Yet we always looked forward to the visit, because no matter how long and tiring and hot the trip was, when we got to Grandmother’s house, it all seemed worth it. Daddy always said he could hardly wait to put his feet under Grandma’s table, and she never disappointed him. There was always lots to eat, much of it fresh from the garden. We would sit outside on the white wooden swing set in the shady yard until it was time for bed. Then, usually Daddy, Carl, and Granddaddy would stay up talking late into the night.

Maggie’s hair had turned from blond to brown to gray, but her health was excellent. She could bend over and touch her toes without bending her knees well up into her 70s.

Thomas and Maggie celebrated their Golden Wedding anniversary on November 22, 1955. Carl and Jean played host in their home to his sisters and brother and their families, who came during that Thanksgiving weekend to honor Thomas and Maggie Hopson. They unwrapped gifts of gold-embroidered pillow cases and similar items.

But less than a month later, Thomas suffered a stroke that was the beginning of his last illness. He had to be transferred to a hospital in Cincinnati for treatment, and Maggie went to stay with her son Tom in northern Kentucky. Of course, it had been many years since anyone had called her Maggie. To her husband, she was always “Mother,” and he was “Daddy” to her. Her children called her Mom, and her grandchildren called her Grandmother.

The word came on Valentine’s Day, February 14, 1956, that Thomas had passed away. The hospital called Tom’s home, and it was her daughter-in-law, Beulah, who had to tell Maggie the news.

She buried her husband in the cemetery in Ashland, then returned to the little home they had shared. Her children were concerned about her -- each of them invited her to come and live with them. She wanted to stay in her own home as long as she could, however. So they coaxed her to visit with them for a few weeks at a time, and she enjoyed that -- traveling on a Greyhound bus, spending a couple of weeks here and a couple of weeks there, but always returning to her home in Ashland.

She lived to be nearly 87, and her strong constitution kept her in good physical health almost to the end, though she weighed only about 70 pounds. However, for the last seven or eight years of her life she was probably afflicted with what we now call Alzheimer’s disease (then usually called senility). One after another of her children noticed, when she was staying in their homes, her unusual behavior and memory loss. When she was staying with Tom and Beulah in the mid-1960s, she didn’t seem to know who Margaret and Beverly, their two youngest daughters, were. These symptoms worsened until it became necessary to place her in a nursing home during the last years of her life. She died peacefully in her sleep on July 21, 1971, and is buried beside her husband in the Ashland Cemetery in Ashland, Kentucky.

Sources of information:

Personal recollections

Letters from Sarah Margaret Walter Hopson

Conversations with her son, Thomas J. Hopson, Jr. (1915-1983)

Letters from her daughters, Olive Hopson Browning (1908-1991)

and Gail Hopson Metheny (1923-1994)

Conversations with her daughter, Ruth Hopson Bailey (1910-1987)

West Virginia Conference Journals.

Morris W. Shawkey: History of West Virginia, 1928.

Hopson family Bible (in my possession)

Letters from her nephew, Joseph W. Inghram (1906-1986)

[2] Letter from his wife, my grandmother, Sarah Margaret Walter Hopson, postmarked June 24, 1963.
[3] Floyd Co., KY census of 1880 and 1900.

[5] Names, birthdates and places and marriages of all children in Hopson Family Bible now in my possession.
[6] Death dates and places of all children provided in writing by themselves or their children, in my files.

[7] All information about his ministry, churches, etc., provided by Dr. J.B.F. Yoak of the West Virginia Conference of the Methodist Church, letters dated November 12, 1974 and December 4, 1974.
[8] Morris Harvey College Alumni Office, letter dated 1 Nov 1974.