This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Hopkins, Crow, Longfellow Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/an/kUB.2ACE/340.611.674 Message Board Post: In my opinion, you would do well to ignore Latta's book, "Controversial Mark Hopkins." Among other things, Edward "Ned" HOPKINS was born in Virginia, not Vermont, as his 1850 census record shows (Randolph Co., NC, p. 154B). A connection of any southern HOPKINSes to New England ones is suspect merely on the face of it -- because of its geographic improbability. The motivation for asserting such a connection seems to stem from a desire to connect the family to New England poet, Henry Wadsworth LONGFELLOW. But the central issue of the book, that Mark HOPKINS, railroad baron, was the son of Edward HOPKINS & Hannah CROW is, as far as I'm concerned, simply preposterous -- please see my response to Ovid D. HOPKINS, in this thread, for the reasons.