Elizabeth Ash Hopkins (1753-?)

Elizabeth Ash Hopkins (b. c. 1753) was the eldest daughter of John Ash, Baptist minister at Pershore and brother-in-law and former pastor of Mrs. Martha Goddard Steele, second wife of William Steele IV of Broughton. Elizabeth Ash was thus a cousin by marriage to the poet Mary Steele and her half-sisters, Anne and Martha. After the death of Revd Ash in 1779, Mrs. Elizabeth Ash (d. 1794) and her daughters moved to Bristol, where they were later joined by her youngest son, Joseph, all becoming members of the congregation at Broadmead. Elizabeth Ash, like so many of the women she knew in the Steele circle of Broughton, postponed marriage until later in life. In 1789 or early 1790 she became the second wife of Joshua Hopkins of Alcester (1738-1798), joining the Baptist church at Alcester in April 1790, most likely having spent some time previous to her marriage living in Birmingham attendint to her younger brother, Joseph, during his apprenticeship there. At that time she became known to the young Baptist minister at Birmingham, Samuel Pearce, and his wife, the daughter of Joshua Hopkins. After her husband’s death in 1798, Elizabeth Ash Hopkins continued on at Alcester until her marriage in 1803 to a Mr. Hemming[s] (possibly one of the Hemmings associated with the Maze Pond Baptist congregation in Southwark or the Baptist Hemmings at Kimbolton). Though many daughters of dissenting parents attended boarding schools in the eighteenth century (Anne Steele and Mary Steele both did so), Elizabeth Ash appears to have been educated solely by her father, and her education was not a normal one for any young girl at that time. Besides his work as a Baptist minister, John Ash operated a school and was a noted lexicographer an grammarian; as a result, he gave Elizabeth much the same education his male scholars received. He published The Easiest Introduction to Dr. Lowth’s English Grammar in 1760, which John Collett Ryland, Baptist minister and educator at Northampton, noted “was originally designed for the Use of his Daughter, who was then but five Years of Age.” See John Collett Ryland, “Advertisement,” in his unauthorized edition of the 5th edition of Ash’s Easiest Introduction (London: E. and C. Dilly, 1768), 7. Two letters by Elizabeth Ash Hopkins after her marriage, including a remarkable eyewitness account by her of the Priestley Riots in Birmingham in 1791, can be found in the Pearce Family MSS Collection, F.P.C. D55, Angus Library, Oxford. Click here for transcriptions of each letter.