Thomas R Hopkins was born in Illinois, in 1883.
At 6 years of age, he was place in a Catholic orphanage, on the south side of Chicago, by his father. His mother had died.
He was there 6 years, until 1895.
From 12 years old until 21 years,he was known as Tommy White, after his 'adopted' parents.
At 21, he was formally offered the name White as a surname. He politely declined it.
He said, "The only thing my parents left me was my name".
The 1900 Federal census for Illinois says, he was born in Illinois, both his parents were born in Ireland.
No parent's name mentioned.
No Irish county recorded.
From my earliest memory, I was told, "You're a HOPKINS and You're IRISH !" Most Hopkins I've come in contact with are English, Scot or Welsh.
In 2004, I ran my DNA, to help solve this mystery. I've matched Hopkins near Castlebar, Swineford, Ballaghaderreen, and Boyle.
They didn't find the Norse, Norman, English of Scot gene in me. A true mystery, don't you know.
There's a picture of Thomas and his family as my profile picture.
Please take a look at the picture and see if you recognize anyone in you area who resembles my family. We're easily recognizable.
I very much look forward to your help and your responses. Prayers are welcome, too.
Monday 28th Jan 2013, 04:38AM
Message Board Replies
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Do you know much about their emigration? The dates, the reasonwhy they left, who they may have travelled with?..etc..Generally more information was given atthe port of arrival rather than the port of departure. If you knew which city they arrived at (e.g.Liverpool, New York, etc.), this could be a good place to find more information. -And perhaps evenfind out an exact place of origin. Ellis Island:http://www.ellisisland.org/search/passSearch.asp Castlegarden:http://www.castlegarden.org/ US National Archives/Immigration info:http://www.archives.gov/research/immigration/ The Boston Pilot; From October 1831 through October 1921, the Boston Pilot newspaper printed a?Missing Friends? column with advertisements from people looking for ?lost? friends and relativeswho had emigrated from Ireland to the United States. This extraordinary collection of 40,743 recordsis available here as a searchable online database, which contains a text record for each ad thatappeared in the Pilot. http://infowanted.bc.edu/ The next thing you could do is find the counties and places in Ireland your family names are mostprevalent. Look at the website http://www.irishtimes.com/ancestor/surname/ and perhapssomething will match some other clue you may have found elsewhere? If nothing turnsup ? it is advisable to try different variations of the spellings of the names. If you have a possiblefirst name you could try the Irish Census 1901, 1911 at www.census.nationalarchives.ie/ or the landvaluation record called Griffiths Valuationhttp://askaboutireland.ie/griffith-valuation/index.xml
Thursday 21st Feb 2013, 10:55AM -
Hi Patrick.
This is my first visit to Ireland Reaching Out and I saw your post and thought I would take the opportunity to say "Hi".
Sean
Tuesday 9th Apr 2013, 04:57PM