The earliest known Hopper ancestor is Blackgrove Hopper (1759-1831), a Baptist minister who migrated from Fauquier County, Virginia through Greene County, Tennessee to Lancaster, Garrard County, Kentucky. His son Joseph Hopper (1782-1860), also born in Fauquier County, continued in the Baptist tradition.

Joseph’s first wife died in 1838. On February 11, 1840, in Fayette County, Kentucky, Joseph married Mary Jane Dunlap (1814-1906), thirty-two years his junior. She came from a Scotch-Irish Presbyterian family — “one of the oldest and most distinguished of the Scotch-Irish Presbyterian families of the South,” according to one family historian. Her father was Major William Dunlap III (1744-1816) of Lexington, Kentucky, who served as mayor, farmer, and butcher. Mary Jane’s obituary records that she joined the Presbyterian church at age 22 — around 1836, four years before marrying Joseph Hopper — and “throughout her long and useful life remained a devout member.”

The Dunlap family had a long Presbyterian lineage:

• William Dunlop (1654-1703) was a Scottish Covenanter, Principal of the University of Glasgow, and the first Presbyterian pastor in South Carolina
• William Dunlop Jr. (1692-1720) was a professor of church history at the University of Edinburgh and defender of the Westminster Confession of Faith
• Alexander Dunlop (1682-1747) taught Adam Smith Greek at Glasgow University
• Rev. Alexander Dunlap was a Presbyterian minister with sympathies to the Covenanter Party

George Dunlap Hopper

Joseph and Mary Jane’s son George Dunlap Hopper was born on October 29, 1848, in Lancaster, Kentucky. Joseph was 66 years old. George’s middle name came from his mother’s family.

George broke from his father’s Baptist tradition. No Hopper before him was Presbyterian; Mary Jane Dunlap introduced Presbyterianism to the family.

George married Katherine E. Higgins on October 7, 1875, a “Lifelong Presbyterian.” His obituary from August 1913 records that he “had been a member of the Presbyterian Church nearly 45 years,” dating his membership to around 1868, when he was about twenty. He served as deacon and elder in the Stanford Presbyterian Church.

George’s Children

George and Katherine’s children were all Presbyterian:

• Rev. William Higgins Hopper — pastor of the Presbyterian church in Burnside, Kentucky
• Professor Walter Owsley Hopper — superintendent of the high school at Mt. Sterling
• Margaret Higgins Hopper — teacher at Stanford High School
• George Dunlap Hopper Jr. — honors graduate of Central University, a Presbyterian institution
• Rev. Joseph Hopper (1892-1971) — Presbyterian minister and missionary to Korea for 34 years (1920-1954)

Joseph’s brother Joseph Barron Hopper also became a Presbyterian minister and missionary to Korea.

Joseph’s children—including my grandfather Joe B. Hopper—were all raised Presbyterian. The family remained in Presbyterian churches through the 20th century.

George Dunlap Hopper was the first Presbyterian in the Hopper line. Mary Jane Dunlap’s family heritage became the Hopper heritage as well.