|
AMOS LAWRENCE HOPKINS, son of Mark Hopkins, D.D., LL.D., president of our
Alma Mater, and his wife, Mary (Hubbell) Hopkins, was born in Williamstown, April 10,
1844. He passed his preparatory studies at the Edwards Place School, Stockbridge,
Massachusetts, but did not take the full college course.
He entered our Class as a special student, and passed Senior year with us. He was
a member of the 'Logian Literary Society, and of the Lyceum of Natural History; orator in
one of the Adelphic Union exhibitions; captain of our Class military organization that
formed a company in the college battalion; and secretary on our Class Day program. Later,
in 1880, he was elected Alumni Trustee.
Immediately after leaving college, in August, 1863, Hopkins entered the army as
second lieutenant in the First Massachusetts Cavalry, and during his three years' service won
the commission of captain and major. He was wounded in the Battle of the Wilderness,
May 5, 1864. He was mustered out in 1866.
For about a year, 1867, after leaving the army, Hopkins was superintendent of a mine
in Colorado. He then entered upon a career as a railroad official, in which he has been
eminently successful.
He began his life work at Bridgeport, Connecticut, in 1868, as superintendent of the
Housatonic Railroad, a line running from Bridgeport to Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
Subsequently he held the same position, in 1871, in connection with the Kansas City, St.
Joseph and Council Bluffs Railway. A little later, between 1871 and 1896, he held the
following positions in connection with railways of the middle West, to wit: vice-president
of the Illinois Central ; receiver of the Toledo, Peoria and Western; vice-president of the
Wabash, St. Louis and Pacific; Missouri Pacific; Missouri, Kansas and Texas; and Texas
Pacific; also receiver of the Manhattan Elevated Railway, and president of the Peoria and
Pekin Union Railway Company.
In 1896, Hopkins was appointed receiver of the Chicago and Northern Pacific
Railroad, and was elected president of the New York, Susquehanna and Western Railroad
Company. He has retired from active management in the various railway corporations with
which he has been connected and is connected, though he is still a director in the Texas
Pacific, New York, Susquehanna and Western, and Panama railway companies.
Hopkins is a member of the New York Chamber of Commerce, of the Military Order
of the Loyal Legion; and of the following social clubs: University and St. Anthony, New
York City; Union and Country, Boston; Metropolitan, Washington, D. C.; Jekyl Island,
Georgia.
January 30, 1892, our classmate married Miss Theresa B. Dodge, of Boston. They
have no children.
Source:
Class of Sixty-Three Williams College Fortieth Year Report, by
the Class Historian, Thomas Todd Printer, Boston, 1903
|
