Johns Hopkins

• Born: May 19, 1795
• Birthplace: Whitehall Plantation (now Whitehall Manor), Anne Arundel County, Maryland
• Died: December 24, 1873
• Place of death: Baltimore, Maryland

American banker and merchant

Hopkins’s bequeathal of $7 million, railroad stock, and his Clifton estate created and endowed Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins Medical School and Hospital, among the most renowned institutions of their kind in the United States.

Sources of wealth: Trade; banking; real estate; investments

Bequeathal of wealth: Relatives; educational institution; medical institution

Early Life

Johns Hopkins was the second of eleven children born to wealthy parents, Samuel Hopkins and Hannah Janney Hopkins, on a tobacco plantation between Baltimore and Annapolis. His first name, Johns, was the surname of Margaret Johns, the daughter of a wealthy landowner in Calvert County who married Gerard Hopkins, Johns Hopkins’s great-grandfather. Johns Hopkins and his family enjoyed wealth and comfort. Situated in a beautiful area of streams, rolling hills, and trees, the home where he was raised was the site of frequent social gatherings. Family members and neighbors enjoyed fox hunting. While the Hopkins family had come to America from England as members of the Church of England, his great-grandfather Gerard Hopkins joined the Society of Friends (Quakers) after hearing preacher George Fox in 1671.

Hopkins’s family fortune and his life changed in 1807, when his parents, deciding to abide by the Quakers’ support of abolition, freed their slaves. The leisure time his family had enjoyed was now directed toward working the plantation, and though Hopkins had been an avid student and reader, he now had to stop attending school. At seventeen, he was sent to live with his uncle Gerard Hopkins and work in his wholesale grocery business in Baltimore.

First Ventures

Hopkins proved himself to be a valuable employee for his uncle. His early experience of a change in fortune developed in him a carefulness and frugality that would characterize his business dealings throughout his life. He demonstrated these traits early when he was left to tend to the grocery business and the family, while his uncle and aunt traveled for several months to attend a convention of Quakers in Ohio.

Working and living in his uncle’s household, Hopkins fell in love with his uncle’s daughter, Elizabeth, who returned his love. When his uncle refused to approve the marriage of first cousins, Hopkins set out on his own. With monetary support of $10,000 from his uncle Gerard, and the same amount of money from both his mother and a maternal uncle, John Janney, Hopkins opened a mercantile establishment with three of his brothers called Hopkins Brothers. This venture was immediately successful, partly because of Hopkins’s willingness to accept whiskey as payment for goods purchased, even though the Society of Friends disapproved of this practice and his uncle Gerard refused to engage in it. Hopkins bottled and resold the whiskey as “Hopkins Best.”

Mature Wealth

Hopkins remained with Hopkins Brothers for twenty-five years, and in the process he established a reputation as a thoughtful, careful, and creditworthy businessman. As his business thrived, he accumulated enough money to lend to others in whom he recognized a potential for success and to purchase properties for development and building. He oversaw the building of dozens of warehouses close to the waterfront, where he stored the goods he purchased and sold. At the time of Hopkins Brothers’ success, Baltimore was developing into a thriving port, propitiously situated at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. Hopkins and other business owners took advantage of the city’s centrality for moving goods from the South and West overseas or to other locations in the United States that were most accessible by water.

As Baltimore developed, so did Hopkins’s fortunes as he moved into banking and lending. As a merchant he had used Conestoga wagons, capable of transporting four tons of merchandise overland. He immediately recognized the value of a more efficient mode of transportation that presented itself with the newly created Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, in which Hopkins invested and which he supported enthusiastically. In 1847, he became a director of this railway, and in 1855 he was appointed its chairman of finance, a position he held for the rest of his life. He also held between fifteen and seventeen hundred shares of stock in this rail line. As the railroad developed, he recognized the business and financial acumen of a young Baltimore businessman, John W. Garrett. He nominated Garrett for the presidency of the Baltimore and Ohio and promoted his election. Garrett became president and made the Baltimore and Ohio one of the most prosperous railroads of its day, consistently earning profits for investors.

Hopkins repeatedly demonstrated his ability to recognize and support a potentially promising person or venture. In 1857 and 1873, he pledged his personal fortune to support the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad during economic downturns. He also assisted the city of Baltimore in trying economic times, leading other bankers in an effort to lend Baltimore $1 million for the city’s defense at the beginning of the Civil War. His support enabled both the railroad and the city of Baltimore to flourish. He earned a reputation as a shrewd judge of character, reputedly driving a hard bargain but making possible many business enterprises that would not otherwise have been financed. Hopkins served for many years as president of Merchants Bank. Recognized as a financial authority, he was sought out to serve as director or treasurer of many other financial organizations.

Hopkins was a thrifty man who cared little for clothes and never bought an overcoat. However, he did love his properties. He purchased and lived in two beautiful residences in Baltimore, one close to the harbor on Saratoga Street, the other a five-hundred-acre estate he named Clifton, several miles from the harbor. Here he decorated his home lavishly and tastefully and oversaw the creation of beautiful gardens, which he invited the public to visit on weekends. Even though he was a Quaker, he indulged his love of good food and wine and presided over elaborate dinners, hosting many guests and members of his large extended family.

Neither Hopkins nor his first love, Elizabeth, ever married, but they remained close friends throughout their lifetimes. His bachelorhood enabled him to devote his energy and enthusiasm for life to his business ventures. As he grew older, he longed to serve the public good in some lasting way. Valuing education and observing public health problems in Baltimore, particularly the effects of epidemics, he developed a desire to contribute to the education and health of his beloved city. He determined to create a university and hospital, which he referred to as his two children. He sought advice from others on ways to facilitate his goals and was encouraged in this venture by his friend Garrett. Garrett set up a meeting between Hopkins and George Peabody, a London investment banker, who, with financial roots in Baltimore, became the city’s first philanthropist, founding the Peabody Institute, a cultural center and library. In 1867, soon after this meeting, Hopkins appointed trustees and set out the terms of funding for a university and hospital. Eventually, the Peabody Institute would become a division of Johns Hopkins University.

Legacy

A man who had always cared for his relatives, providing homes for his mother and sisters during his lifetime, Hopkins left money and/or property for his sister and other relatives, his former sweetheart Elizabeth, his servants. and several Baltimore charities. He left the bulk of his estate to create the Johns Hopkins University and the Johns Hopkins Medical School and Hospital. Before his death in 1873, he appointed trustees for both the university and hospital, including businessmen, college-educated men, and fellow Quakers. Several trustees served both institutions. While he left specific instructions that the university should develop educated, capable community members and become a model of scholarly endeavors, and that the medical school and hospital should train doctors and nurses and provide care for the poor, he left most of the practical decisions of establishing both institutions to the respective boards of trustees.

Bibliography

Chesney, Alan M. Early Years, 1867-1893. Vol. 1 in The Johns Hopkins Hospital and The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine: A Chronicle. 3 vols. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1943. A thorough history of the goals and directions of this innovative, progressive medical school and hospital.

Hawkins, Hugh. Pioneer: A History of the Johns Hopkins University,1874-1889. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1960. A record of how the university developed and grew.

Sander, Kathleen Waters. Mary Elizabeth Garrett: Society and Philanthropy in the Gilded Age. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008. Describes how Garrett procured the last essential funding for the Johns Hopkins Medical School. Garrett was the daughter of John W. Garrett, president of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.

Thom, Helen Hopkins. Johns Hopkins: A Silhouette. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1929. The authoritative life of Hopkins, written by his great-niece and based on family stories and information from her father.