Leprelet Joseph Hopkins

Leprelet Joseph Hopkins Family

Hannah,  Joseph Walter, Ann, Elisabeth Ann,

Sarah Jane, Leprelet, John Dexter, Julia

The Value of a Good Education

Leprelet Joseph Hopkins

Excitement was great especially among the school children when the circus came to Providence, Rhode Island.  Of course young Joe Hopkins was anxious to go.  He and a friend Billy had only fifteen cents between them and the tickets were twenty-five cents.  The boys came up with a brilliant plan. They went to a store and bought a dozen eggs with ten of the fifteen cents they had.  They wrapped them carefully in cotton and took them to Miss Dolly Cole, the lady with a flock of pure bred chickens.  They told her Billy's mother had sent the eggs that she had been wanting.  Miss Cole gave them fifty cents for the eggs and they skipped off to the circus with enough extra pennies for a stick of hore hound candy.

            Leprelet Joseph Hopkins was born in Providence, Rhode Island, March 28, 1835 .The family was comfortably situated and home life was happy. Abbie Ann Drew Hopkins, his mother, was of Dutch descent. She was a devout Methodist and planned to have her son Joseph become a Methodist minister. Joe had other ideas. He was unusually mischievous and had many interests outside of school.

Joseph spent most of his time playing about the wharf.  Climbing about on the boats and ships and fishing.  He dreamed of being captain of a ship.          

One day when he was in the upper grammar grades of school, about age fourteen, the sun was bright, the air sticky and hot.  Joe could not sit in school one more day.  He made his way to the Warf and either gained employment as a cabin boy or went on board a ship unnoticed and hid himself as a stow-away.

When the ship was some distance from shore he found to his dismay that he was on a pirate ship. In his own words, he said, "It didn't make a damn bit of difference to me." Thus his life for the next five or six years was a tough one. This pirate ship touched ports in all parts of the world but most of the time it spent on the coast of Sierra Leon and Cape Town. The crew was made up of tough old seasoned pirate sea­men, and Joe, being young mischievous and hot headed, learned to obey orders the hard way. 

A very dear friend of Joe Hopkins, Price W. Nelson, said that Joe passed the "Supreme Penalty" at least twice. One day the captain told Joe to go down into the hold and peel potatoes for the cook, but Joe, being too proud refused. The captain ordered the supreme penalty for this young upstart for disobeying orders. This penalty consisted of throwing a heavy sea rope over the bow of the ship and drawing it up until it was around the middle of the ship. The rope was then tied around the person, who was thrown over board, and pulled under the ship and up the other side. It is said that very few survived this punishment, because of the infested waters and sharp barnacles that were attached to the bottom of the ship. The danger of drowning was also great, but despite everything Joe underwent this twice, and survived.

Later on while sailing in the Caribbean Sea the ship struck storm and rough waters and was wrecked. Young Joe, with others managed to hang onto a piece of drifting timber. Some hours later they were picked up by a passing cargo ship and taken to New Orleans.            

It had been about five years when Joseph returned to his home in Providence, Rhode Island.  By now he had learned the value of reading, writing and arithmetic. Joe returned to school and completed the grammar grades.  He then went to Baltimore where he apprenticed in a molding shop and worked in a blacksmiths shop.  (His, progenitor, Stephen Hopkins signed the Declaration of Independence.)

            When Joe's roaming spirit took over again he went by boat down the Mississippi River to Fort Leavenworth.  Here he met a number who were going to Utah with Johnston's Army.  A spark of excitement entered him and he joined the army as a teamster or mule skinner.  They left in the spring of 1858 to quell what was perceived to be a rebellion in Utah Territory.

             When Johnston's Army broke camp to return east. Joe deserted along with many others and remained in Utah. He preferred the company of the Utah Mormons over the crude, drinking quarreling army men. The army had spent a cold winter with substandard rations, inadequate clothing, and poor shelter.

It was in 1861while living in Payson, Utah that Leprelet Joseph Hopkins was baptized by Willard Glover McMullin. 

Scrappy old Joe who could fix anything was of great value to the colonizers.  He was called by President Young to settle the Dixie country. He went to Virgin.  The work was so hard and results so discourag­ing that many of the settlers returned to the north. Everyone was extremely poor. The Indians constantly annoyed them by stealing from them. 

One day Joe saw an Indian watching his cows from a high place on the hill, and took a long shot at him. The Indian left and years later came back. When he saw Joe Hopkins he recog­nized him and said he was a pretty good shot. He then showed the mark on his thigh where he had been hit. 

Joe was always good for a joke. It was conference time in the very early days of Dixie. Joe had walked over 20 miles to St. George to attend conference. When the day ended, Gus Hardy asked if he’d take a ride back to Virgin.  Hardy drove a span of fancy mules and was very proud of them. Grandfather said, "Well Gus I'd like to but you see I'm in a hell'uve a hurry."  There upon he set out on foot to beat Gus to Virgin. Each time he came in view of Gus he walked steadily. Each time he lost sight of Gus he ran at top speed. He got into Virgin just enough ahead of Gus that he was sitting on a log whittl­ing as tho he had always been there

"Well Gus, how was the trip?" he called. He never tired of jokes and his eyes twinkled with mischief when he was thinking of one.

The men of the town had a habit of gathering at the co-op store, around a tall pot bellied stove to crack pine nuts and swap yarns. One day Joe rushed into the store and up to the crowd around the stove and asked them to come help him pull a man out of the mud. They all got up and when at the door one asked, "How bad is he stuck."

"Oh up to the ankles," remarked Joe

"That’s not bad!" said the man in disgust and started back to the stove.

Joe remarked. "Bad enough,  he went in head first." 

Joe spent about two years on Buckskin Mountain where he helped put up a saw-mill.  He kept the saw mill in repair while some of the timber for the St. George Temple and Tabernacle was being cut. His work as a blacksmith was very important to the small communities in which he lived. He kept in repair and in good running order the flour mills and saw mills. He was always able to put new machinery together, patch up the old or invent a new part to keep things running.

Joe never went into debt and was always ready to lend a hand.

Joe never forgot the value of education. He often made loans, interest free, to young people to help them with their education.  One day a young woman, Annie Englestead, from Mt. Carmel came in to make a final payment.  She was so very grateful she had walked seven miles to make the payment.  As she sat before the fire Joe asked why she did not have any rubbers on.  She said because she saved every cent to meet her obligation.  When she left she was wearing a pair of new rubbers.  

At age 82 Joe said, “The ideal of my childhood was to become the captain of a ship.  After joining the church my aim in life was to rear an honest and respectable family, and to give them an education so they might be men and women of influence among their associates.”