Mary (Kent) Hopkins (abt. 1583 - 1613)

Born about 1583 in Hursley, Hampshire, England

Ancestors

Wife of Stephen Hopkins — married 9 May 1599 in London, Greater London, England

Descendants

Died 9 May 1613 at about age 30 in Hursley, Hampshire, England

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Mary (Kent) Hopkins was related to a passenger on the Mayflower. Join: Mayflower Project Discuss: mayflower

Biography

Mary Kent was the first wife of Pilgrim / Adventurer and Mayflower passenger Stephen Hopkins. She was the mother of his 3 older children, 2 of whom were also Mayflower passengers, accompanying their father to America: Constance (Hopkins) Snow and younger brother, Giles Hopkins in 1620. Mary's parents were Robert Kent & Joan (Machell) Kent, of Hursley, Hampshire, England.

A large array of circumstantial evidence has led leading Hopkins family researchers to conclude that Stephen's first wife was, in fact, named Mary Kent. Caleb Johnson has yet to update his website, but has been giving talks about his new conclusions. Other researchers concur, as laid out in Wikipedia Stephen Hopkins' Wikipedia page. In 2014, an article "Who Was the First Wife of Stephen Hopkins?" was published by the Florida Society of Mayflower Descendants, citing Caleb Johnson's findings. It remains the best contemporary source for this identification and also discusses Mary's parents & lineage in Hampshire, England. ^[1]

One piece of contemporary 17th Century evidence that supports this theory deserves to be recorded here. Caleb Johnson notes that on May 19, 1608, according to local records, Stephen Hopkins' lease at Hursley's Merdon Manor, where he, wife Mary and their children had been living several years (most-likely since their marriage before 1604), was turned over to a "widow Kent". If Mary's maiden name was Kent, this surely was her mother. Consequently, when Stephen Hopkins left Hursley the following year, he was not "abandoning" his young family as has been conjectured by some; they were living with Mary's mother in her village, where she ran an "ale shoppe". Any property called a "Manor" was fairly well-to-do in 17th Century England.^[2]

Estate

"One Hopkins probate records and uncovered only one at Hursley - an administration on the estate of Mary Hopkins in 1613. Her estate inventory was dated 10 May 1613, and administration was granted on 12 May 1613 to "Roberto Lyte [vir] gard de hursly" and "Thome Syms vir supra[vi]sor pauper'" during the minority of "Constance, Elize[beth] et Egidij" (in that order).^[3] . The inventory follows (the lineation of the heading and of the Latin statement of probate is indicated by slashes (/):

An inventory of the goods and Chattells of /Mary Hopkins of Hursley in the Countie of / South[amp]ton widowe deceased taken [interlined: & prized] the tenth day / of may 1613 as followeth vizt.

Imprimis certen Beames in the garden & wood in the back side ....ixs

It(e)m the ymplem(en)ts in the Be(..)ehouse .........................vjs

It[e]m certen things in the kitchin.......................................iijs

It[e]m in the hall one table, one Cupboorde & certen other things...vjs

It[e]m in the buttry six small vessells & some other small things......vjs

It[e]m brasse and pewter..................................................xxijs

It[e]m in the Chamber over the shop two beds, one bable & a forme wth some other small things....xxjs

It[e]m in the Chamber over the hall one fetherbed & 3 Chests & one box....xs

It[e]m Lynnen & wearing apparrell.......................................xijs

It[e]m in the shop one shopborde & a plank............................xijd

It[e]m the Lease of the house wherin she Late dwelled...............xijs

It[e]m in ready mony & in debts by specialitie & wthout specialitie...xvijd xijs

S[umm] total[is].............................................................xxvd xjs

Gregory

his mark [star] horwood

William toot

Rychard Wolle

[Note: in the above inventory, the value is written in Roman numerals, 'J' for pound or £, 's' is shilling 'd' is for pense.]

": Commissa fuit Admi: bonorum at Callorum' / Marie Hopkins nuper de Hursley vid defunc[tae] / Roberto Lyte [vir] gard de hursly et / Thome Syms vir supra[vi]sor p[er] pauper' / [---] [---] de par[---] duran minor / Constance, Elize[beth] et Egidij liberor / d[i]c[t]i deft duodecimo die maij / Anno Dni 1613 de bene &c p[er]sonalir jur &c / salve iur cuiuscumq salvaq postestate &c.

"There are several important observations to be made about this inventory. One is the reference to the shop and the "shopborde" (what we would call a counter), (Shop-board: "A counter or table upon which a tradesman's business is transacted or upon which his goods are exposed to sale" (Oxford English Dictionary). which tells us that Mary and presumably her husband Stephen were shopkeepers. In addition, Mary is stated as having the lease on her dwelling at the time of her death, which may be a clue to her identity.

"Most striking, however, is that the estate inventory calls Mary Hopkins a widow, although her burial record calls her "wife," not widow. It would have been very unusual for an administration to have been granted to the estate of a woman whose husband was living (i.e., a feme covert), and Stephen was not dead, as he came on the Mayflower in 1620 with his children Constance and Giles. The solution to this odd puzzle is found in the facts that Stephen and Mary Hopkins stopped having children in 1608, and that there was a Stephen Hopkins aboard the Sea Venture which left for Virginia in 1609. If Mary's husband Stephen was in Virginia in 1613 and his condition was unknown, the court or the parish might well have found it expedient to assume he was dead in order to make the property available for his children's support. And that assumption was not an unlikely one: Mortality rates at Jamestown were extremely high."^[4]

Research Notes

mtDNA Results V

According to "The Mayflower Quarterly"^[5], three matrilineal (all female line) descendants from three of the four known daughters of Constance (Hopkins) Snow: viz: Sarah (Snow) Walker, Ruth (Snow) Cole, and Mary (Snow) Paine, all were mtDNA tested and they all came up matching each other. The FamilyTreeDNA Mayflower Project currently has four individuals listed under Mary, wife of Stephen Hopkins.^[6] They all fall under the V Haplogroup^[7]

Sources

1. ↑ Myles Standish Colony News, Vol. 5, Issue 1; Fall 2014. (Link no longer available online, not archived.)
2. ↑ Caleb Johnson, "Here Shall I Die Ashore, Stephen Hopkins: Bermuda Castaway, Jamestown Survivor, and Mayflower Pilgrim." See also, http://www.laddfamily.com/Files/Stephen%20Hopkins/Hopkins.htm - Paragraph added by Chet Snow, a Hopkins descendant on Oct. 23, 2014; edited by him on Sep. 11, 2017.
3. ↑ Estate of Mary Hopkins 1613, Hampshire Record Office, Winchester, 1613 AD/046.
4. ↑ Johnson, Caleb. Here Shall I Die Ashore: Stephen Hopkins: Bermuda Castaway, Jamestown Survivor, and Mayflower Pilgrim.. United Kingdom: Xlibris US, 2007. Pgs 149-150.
5. ↑ Vol. 86 No. 3 (Fall 2019), p. 40
6. ↑ Only one of the four lists Mary as their mtDNA ancestor.
7. ↑ One of the three individuals only had the HVR I tested. It is unknown if any of the others had full mtDNA testing, or only HVR I&II testing. Coding region results are not listed on the FTDNA website for privacy reasons.

• Mayflower Families Through Five Generations. Mayflower Society. General Society of Mayflower Descendants, Plymouth, MA, 2001

• The Mayflower Quarterly, Investigation into the origins of Mary and Elizabeth, the wives of Stephen Hopkins by Stephen Neal, (Plymouth, MA.: The General Society of Mayflower Descendants), vol. 78, No. 2 June 2012 p. 137

• The Mayflower Quarterly, Appendix - Investigation into the origins of Mary and Elizabeth, the wives of Stephen Hopkins , March 2013, (Plymouth, MA.: The General Society of Mayflower Descendants), vol. 79, no. 1, p. 58

• The Mayflower Quarterly, "Suitably Provided and Accommodated:" Plymouth Area Taverns, by Stephen C. O'Neill, (Plymouth, MA.: The General Society of Mayflower Descendants), December 2011, vol. 77, no. 4, pp. 335, 336

• Stephen Hopkins' Wikipedia page

• Caleb H. Johnson, "The Mayflower and her Passengers" (Indiana:Xlibris Corp., Caleb Johnson, 2006)

• Stephen Hopkins article on Caleb Johnson's MayflowerHistory.com

• Stephen Hopkins Article on laddfamily.com

• http://pilgrimhopkins.com/lineageHome.php?pafg01.htm#10C

• MayflowerDNA.org wiki and mtDNA profile for Mary (Kent) Hopkins

• Anderson, Robert Charles. 2020. The Mayflower Migration. Immigrants to Plymouth, 1620. Heritage Books.