From Paisley Abbey to Stanford, Kentucky: The Dunlap Presbyterian Lineage

George Dunlap Hopper (1848–1913) was a Presbyterian elder in Stanford, Kentucky and the first Hopper to be Presbyterian. His middle name came from his mother’s family, the Dunlaps, whose Presbyterianism reaches back to the Covenanting conflicts of seventeenth-century Scotland. The lineage runs through seven generations.

Rev. Alexander Dunlop (c. 1620–1667)

The earliest Dunlop ancestor in this line is Rev. Alexander Dunlop, a Church of Scotland minister. He was the second son of James Dunlop, Laird of Dunlop, in Ayrshire. Alexander was ordained and served as minister of Paisley Abbey from 1644, during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.

Alexander sided with the Covenanter party, the Presbyterians who insisted the Church of Scotland be governed by presbyteries and synods rather than by royal bishops. He was imprisoned by the Privy Council at least twice. According to family tradition recorded on the Clan Dunlop website, after the Covenanters’ defeat at the Battle of Rullion Green in November 1666, Alexander died of a broken heart at Bo’ness on 13 March 1667.

He married Elizabeth Mure, a daughter of William Mure of Glanderston. Their eldest son was William.

Principal William Dunlop (c. 1654–1700)

William Dunlop grew up during the “Killing Time,” the worst years of Covenanter persecution. He became a licentiate of the Church of Scotland and served as a courier for the Covenanting resistance at the Battle of Bothwell Bridge in 1679.

In July 1684, William sailed from the Firth of Clyde on the Carolina Merchant with 149 passengers, including thirty-five banished Covenanters, bound for Charles Town, South Carolina. He helped establish Stuart Town, a Scottish Presbyterian settlement near Port Royal. There he served as both the settlement’s Presbyterian minister (the first in South Carolina) and militia major. Stuart Town was destroyed by the Spanish in August 1686.

After the Glorious Revolution, Dunlop returned to Scotland. In December 1690, he was appointed Principal of the University of Glasgow, likely through the influence of his brother-in-law William Carstares, who later became Principal of the University of Edinburgh. Dunlop also served as Historiographer Royal for Scotland from 1693.

He invested in the Darien scheme, Scotland’s failed attempt to colonize Panama. The colony’s collapse may have contributed to his death on 8 March 1700, at around age forty-six.

He had married his cousin Sarah Carstares, and they had at least three sons: Alexander (born 1684 in Carolina), William (born 1692 in Glasgow), and possibly a third son nicknamed “Jocke” in family correspondence.

William’s distinguished sons

William’s two younger sons are not in the direct line to George Dunlap Hopper, but they show how the family’s Presbyterianism extended into academic life.

Alexander Dunlop (1684–1747) was born during his parents’ time in Carolina and returned to Scotland as a child. He became Professor of Greek at the University of Glasgow, a position he held for decades. His most famous student was Adam Smith, who entered Glasgow in 1737 at age fourteen. Alexander published a Greek grammar in 1736 that was widely used in Scottish schools.

William Dunlop the Younger (1692–1720) became Professor of Divinity and Church History at Edinburgh. He died at twenty-eight but published A Collection of Confessions of Faith, Catechisms, Directories, Books of Discipline, a compilation of the Westminster Standards and other Reformed confessional documents. In his preface, he celebrated the Church of Scotland’s commitment to “the simplicity and plainness of her worship as her peculiar glory.” He was buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard in the grave of his uncle William Carstares.

John Dunlap (c. 1684–before 1773)

The genealogy here is tangled. John Dunlap’s parentage is uncertain. Some family genealogies list him as a son of Principal William, born around 1684 in Carolina during the Stuart Town period. But Alexander (the future Greek professor) was also born in 1684 in Carolina, and the Wikipedia article on Principal William mentions only Alexander and William the Younger as documented sons, plus a third son nicknamed “Jocke” in family correspondence. “Jocke” may be John — Jock being a common Scots form of the name. Other genealogists, including Hanna’s The House of Dunlap, have suggested John was a son of Alexander the Greek professor rather than of William the Principal. The Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois refers to a “Prof. John Dunlap of the University of Glasgow” who sailed for Virginia around 1730.

John married Nancy Colvin in Scotland in 1724. The family emigrated to America, living first in New York, then in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, before settling in Augusta County, Virginia around the middle of the eighteenth century. They were Presbyterian. John died before November 1773 in Augusta County and may be buried at Old Bethlehem Church in Middlebrook, Virginia.

Major William Dunlap II (1744–1815/16)

John’s son William was born on 10 August 1744 in Augusta County, Virginia. He served as a Major in the American Revolution, remaining in the army until Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown in 1781. A family letter from 1806 references the musket William carried “in the war for liberty,” which was reportedly still in the possession of a descendant in Lexington, Kentucky as late as the early twentieth century.

After the war, William migrated to Fayette County, Kentucky, following the same path as many Scots-Irish Presbyterian families from the Shenandoah Valley. He married Rebecca Robertson, who was born in Staunton and was the aunt of Chief Justice George Robertson. William died on 5 March 1815 (or 1816) in Lexington, Kentucky. His will, probated in April 1816, names his wife Rebecca and children including John, Rebecca, Elizabeth, Patsey, William, Alexander, James, and George.

The family was described as “one of the oldest and most distinguished of the Scotch-Irish Presbyterian families of the South.” William’s descendants included Congressman George W. Dunlap, General James Dunlap and General Henry C. Dunlap of the Union Army, and Colonel William Watkins Dunlap, who left West Point to join the Confederacy.

Major William Dunlap III (1779–1844)

William II’s son William III was born on 8 February 1779 in Fayette County. He married Onetta Green in 1801. He settled in Lexington, Kentucky, where he worked as a farmer and butcher and served for one year as mayor. He died on 2 January 1844.

William III and Onetta had at least ten children, including Mary Jane, Alexander Clay, Andrew Jackson, Green, George, James, John, Frank, Minerva, and a son named William.

Mary Jane Dunlap (1814–1906)

Mary Jane Dunlap was born on 11 January 1814 in Lancaster, Garrard County, Kentucky. At age twenty-two, around 1836, she joined the Presbyterian church. Her obituary records that she “throughout her long and useful life remained a devout member.”

On 11 February 1840, in Fayette County, she married Joseph Hopper (1782–1860), who was thirty-two years her senior. Joseph came from a Baptist family; his father Blackgrove Hopper (1759–1831) was a Baptist minister.

Joseph and Mary Jane had at least two children who survived to adulthood: Martha Dunlap Hopper (1842–1925) and George Dunlap Hopper (1848–1913). After Joseph’s death in 1860, Mary Jane married Jonathan Owsley in 1864. She died on 1 April 1906 in Stanford, Kentucky, at age ninety-two.

George Dunlap Hopper (1848–1913)

George Dunlap Hopper was born on 29 October 1848 in Lancaster, Kentucky, when his father Joseph was sixty-six years old. His middle name honored his mother’s family. He moved to Stanford in 1869 and married Katherine E. Higgins on 7 October 1875.

George became a Presbyterian around 1868, at about age twenty, the first Hopper to join the church his mother’s family had belonged to for generations. His obituary records that he “had been a member of the Presbyterian Church nearly 45 years.” He served as both deacon and elder of the Stanford Presbyterian Church. His obituary called him “a thoroughly good man, a scrupulously honest one, and a citizen than whom there was none better.”

George and Katherine’s children continued the Presbyterian tradition: Rev. William Higgins Hopper pastored the Presbyterian church in Burnside; Rev. Joseph Hopper served as a Presbyterian missionary in Korea for thirty-four years; and their other children were all connected to Presbyterian institutions.

The Presbyterian thread

Every generation in this line was Presbyterian. Alexander Dunlop was imprisoned for the Covenant and died after a Covenanter defeat. His son William sailed to Carolina with banished Covenanters to serve as their minister, then came home to lead one of Scotland’s universities. William’s sons defended the Westminster Confession in print and taught Greek at Glasgow.

In Virginia and Kentucky, the family remained part of Scots-Irish Presbyterian communities in the Shenandoah Valley and then in the Bluegrass. Mary Jane Dunlap joined the Presbyterian church at twenty-two, four years before marrying into the Baptist Hopper family. Her son George became a Presbyterian elder. His sons became Presbyterian ministers and missionaries. The Hopper family has been Presbyterian ever since.

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