Isaac T. Hopper Was Born in the Converted Henhouse That Served As the Family Home on the Hopper Farm Near Woodbury, New Jersey
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GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM FRIEND ISAAC TATUM HOPPER HDT WHAT? INDEX FRIEND ISAAC TATEM HOPPER ISAAC T. H OPPER GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM 1771 December 3, Tuesday: Isaac T. Hopper was born in the converted henhouse that served as the family home on the Hopper farm near Woodbury, New Jersey. HDT WHAT? INDEX ISAAC T. H OPPER FRIEND ISAAC TATEM HOPPER GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM 1792 October 26, Friday: Isaac T. Hopper was accepted as a Quaker by the Philadelphia Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends. HDT WHAT? INDEX FRIEND ISAAC TATEM HOPPER ISAAC T. H OPPER GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM 1795 September 18, Friday: At a silent worship, Friend Isaac T. Hopper and Friend Sarah Tatum celebrated their wedding ceremony in the manner of the Quakers. December 23, Wednesday: Friend Isaac T. Hopper was accepted as a member by the South District Monthly Meeting of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. HDT WHAT? INDEX ISAAC T. H OPPER FRIEND ISAAC TATEM HOPPER GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM 1796 April 4, Monday: Friend Isaac T. Hopper was elected to membership in the Pennsylvania Abolition Society. HDT WHAT? INDEX FRIEND ISAAC TATEM HOPPER ISAAC T. H OPPER GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM 1797 December: Friend Isaac T. Hopper was delegated by his Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends to “extend counsel and admonition to such of our members who continue to trade in or make unnecessary use of distilled spiritous liquors and to endeavor through brotherly love to dissuate them from such practice.” HDT WHAT? INDEX ISAAC T. H OPPER FRIEND ISAAC TATEM HOPPER GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM 1798 Friend Isaac T. Hopper was delegated by his Philadelphia monthly meeting to “treat with Ellis Green for engaging as an officer on Board a ship of war.” He was also in this year appointed to the Committee of Twelve, the Quaker arm that took care of the poor. HDT WHAT? INDEX FRIEND ISAAC TATEM HOPPER ISAAC T. H OPPER GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM 1799 In Philadelphia, Friend Isaac T. Hopper became an overseer of the school for black children. HDT WHAT? INDEX ISAAC T. H OPPER FRIEND ISAAC TATEM HOPPER GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM 1811 January: Friend Isaac T. Hopper was elected to membership in the Acting Committee of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society — the arm of that society which dealt with the cases of Pennsylvania free black citizens who were alleging that their liberties were illegally being denied. HDT WHAT? INDEX FRIEND ISAAC TATEM HOPPER ISAAC T. H OPPER GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM 1832 Friend Isaac T. Hopper published JOURNAL OF THE LIFE AND RELIGIOUS LABOURS OF ELIAS HICKS. WRITTEN BY HIMSELF. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS WRITTEN BY HIMSELF HDT WHAT? INDEX ISAAC T. H OPPER FRIEND ISAAC TATEM HOPPER GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM 1838 September 5, Wednesday: After sleeping on the wharves for a number of nights to evade detection by the sort of slave- catchers who routinely watched the black boarding houses in hope of obtaining rewards, Frederick Douglass was rescued from the only relative security1 of the streets of New-York: ... I kept my secret to myself as long as I could, but I was compelled at last to seek some one who would befriend me without taking advantage of my destitution to betray me. Such a person I found in a sailor named Stuart, a warm-hearted and generous fellow, who, from his humble home on Centre street, saw me standing on the opposite sidewalk, near the Tombs prison. As he approached me, I ventured a remark to him which at once enlisted his interest in me. He took me to his home to spend the night, and in the morning went with me to Mr. David Ruggles, the secretary of the New York Vigilance Committee, a co-worker with Isaac T. Hopper, Lewis and Arthur Tappan, Theodore S. Wright, Samuel Cornish, Thomas Downing, Philip A. Bell, and other true men of their time. All these (save Mr. Bell, who still lives, and is editor and publisher of a paper called the “Elevator,” in San Francisco) have finished their work on earth. Once in the hands of these brave and wise men, I felt comparatively safe.... NARRATIVE LEWIS TAPPAN DAVID RUGGLES GEORGE THOMAS DOWNING ISAAC T. HOPPER 1. The Hortons say, on their page 227, “with the help of a free black woman named Anna and contacts in the underground railroad....” Had Douglass had any such contacts in the Underground Railroad organization he would not have wound up sleeping on the streets in New-York, ridiculously vulnerable to recapture. UNDERGROUND RAILROAD HDT WHAT? INDEX FRIEND ISAAC TATEM HOPPER ISAAC T. H OPPER GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM 1842 Late Spring: Friend Isaac T. Hopper, a bookseller in New-York, was being disowned by his Quaker monthly meeting at this point, for being connected with an abolitionist publication that had attacked another Friends minister as soft on slavery. HDT WHAT? INDEX ISAAC T. H OPPER FRIEND ISAAC TATEM HOPPER GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM 1852 May 7, Friday: Lajos Kossuth was visiting Concord with great fanfare a whole lot of advance publicity and Henry Thoreau, very pointedly, with no fanfare or advance publicity at all, absented himself from Concord to the woods — where he heard the first drumming of the ruffed grouse. John Shepard Keyes would report: As selectman I had to welcome Kossuth on his visit to Concord on a pleasant day in May 52 His visit was put off by some engagement and came on us with short notice at last. But we were equal to the emergency. He was met in a carriage at the line and escorted by the artillery he came to my house where he rested and wrote out or arranged his speech. The artillery formed a guard of honor about the yard to keep off too ardent admirers and after a substantial lunch at which he eat buttered radishes he went to the Town Hall and was welcomed by Mr Emerson. J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY On a plain block of granite at Greenwood Cemetery is now inscribed: ISAAC T. HOPPER, BORN, DECEMBER 3D, 1771, ENDED HIS PILGRIMAGE, MAY 7TH, 1852. “Thou henceforth shalt have a good man’s calm, A great man’s happiness; thy zeal shall find Repose at length, firm Friend of human kind.” HDT WHAT? INDEX FRIEND ISAAC TATEM HOPPER ISAAC T. H OPPER GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM HDT WHAT? INDEX ISAAC T. H OPPER FRIEND ISAAC TATEM HOPPER GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM May 7, Friday: 4:30 A.M. –To Cliffs. Has been a dew, which wets the feet, and I see a very thin fog over the low ground, the first fog, which must be owing to the warm weather. Heard a robin singing powerfully an hour ago, and song sparrows, and the cocks. No peeping frogs in the morning, or rarely. The toads sing (?), but not as at evening. I walk half a mile (to Hubbard’s Pool in the road), before I reach those I heard, — only two or three. The sound is uttered so low and over water; still it is wonderful that it should be heard so far. The traveller rarely perceives when he comes near the source of it, nor when he is farthest away from it. Like the will-o’-the-wisp, it will lead one a long chase over the fields and meadows to find one. They dream more or less at all hours now. I see the relation to the frogs in the throat of many a man. The full throat has relation to the distended paunch. I would fain see the sun as a moon, more weird. The sun now rises in a rosaceous amber. Methinks the birds sing more some mornings than others, when I cannot see the reason. I smell the damp path, and derive vigor from the earthy scent between Potter’s and Hayden’s. Beginning, I may say, with robins [American Robin Turdus migratorius], song sparrows [Melospiza melodia], chip-birds, bluebirds [Eastern Bluebird Sialia sialus], etc., I walked through larks [Eastern Meadowlark Sturnella magna], pewees [Wood Pewee Contopus virens], pigeon woodpeckers [Yellow-shafted Flicker Colaptes auratus], chickadee [Black-capped Chicadee Parus Atricapillus] tull-a-lulls, to towhees, huckleberry-birds, wood thrushes [Catharus mustelina], brown thrasher [Brown Thrasher Toxostroma rufum], jay [Blue Jay Cyanocitta cristata], catbird [Gray Catbird Dumetella carolinensis], etc., etc. Entered a cool stratum of air beyond Hayden’s after the warmth of yesterday. The Viola pedata still in bud only, and the other (q.v.). Hear the first partridge [Ruffed Grouse Bonasa umbellus (Partridge)] drum. The first oven-bird [Seiurus Aurocapillus]. A wood thrush which I thought a dozen rods off was only two or three, to my surprise, and betrayed himself by moving, like a large sparrow with ruffled feathers, and quirking his tail like a pewee, on a low branch. [The 1906 journal editor notes here that probably the bird was a hermit thrush, this motion of the tail being almost a proof positive, adding that probably, too, all the “wood thrushes” seen by Thoreau in April (see ante) were hermits.] Blackbirds [Red-winged Blackbird Agelaius phoeniceus] are seen going over the woods with a chattering bound to some meadow. A rich bluish mist now divides the vales in the eastern horizon mile after mile. (I am ascending Fair Haven.) An oval-leaved pyrola (evergreen) in Brown’s pines on Fair Haven. Cliffs. — This is the gray morning; the sun risen; a very thin mist on the landscape; the falling water smooth.