Ancestral Lines of Chester Everts Howell - (PDF ... - Adkinshorton.net

HOPPERThe Hoppers bring into this account a line originally from Holland. MathewHopper (spelled Hoppen and also Hoppe) married before 1742 Aeltje Cooper(Kuyper) when their daughter Marretje was baptized at Tappen (now in RocklandCounty, NY). Other children were Dirkje, Paulus, Dirk, Annetje,Cornelis b. 1756 and Lambartus. Possibly there were more children as someyears of the records of the Church have been lost. The last three childrenwere baptized in the Clarkstown Reformed Dutch Church, Tappentown.Tappen was General Washington's Headquarters in 1780 for a time and wasthe scene of John Andre's trial and execution in the Benedict Arnold case.The trial itself was in the same Dutch Reformed Church where the olderHopper children had been baptized. This locality is very near the p~oint whereNew York State and New Jersey converge upon New York City. Now in RocklandCounty it was once in disputed territory claimed by both the provinces ofNew York and New Jersey. The present line between the States is one that wasrun in 1771, the 6th line surveyed to settle the boundary to the satisfaction ofboth of these two Colonial Provinces.At the time of the War of the Revolution there was as yet no RocklandCounty since it was not formed from Orange County until 1798. Therefor itwas as a private in an Orange County Militia Regiment that Cornelius Hopperserved under Major John Hathorn in the 4th Orange County Company, the samecompany in which Abraham and Abraham Bennett Jr. , Thomas Burt,Jonathan Rockwell and George Howell served.The Hopper family Bible records help to identify the Cornelius Hopperwho was born and baptized in 1756 as the same Cornelius Hopper whose nameis on the earliest (1794) list of Taxables of the Town of Newtown (Elmira, NY)A small part of Hopper family history written by Rockwell Hopper, son ofCornelius, is in error, but the story as a whole fills in the spaces lacking inearly deeds and in the Wellsburg Church Book entries.During the War of the Revolution Cornelius Hopper married on Dec. 25,1777 Hannah Rockwell, daughter of Jonathan and Hannah Bennett Rockwell, whohad been born in 1760 in Ridgefield, Conn. The oldest child of Cornelius andHannah Hopper was a son and and according to the Dutch custom was namedMathew for his grandfather on his father's side; the second child was namedHannah for Hannah Rockwell on her mother Hannah's side. This Hannah born1781 became later the wife of Abraham Minier son of Christian Minier theearliest settler of Big Flats, Chemung County, N. Y.Shortly before the Hoppers came to Chemung County there was formed onFeb. 3, 1789, a Baptist Church Society at the place now called Wellsburg justsouth of Elmira, N. Y. This Church at different times has been designated bythe names: "of Chemung"; "of Elmira and Chemung"; of Southport and Chemung"and finally as the "Wellsburg Baptist Church" It was the earliest ChurchSociety to be formed in the locality of Newtown (Elmira). The early ChurchBooks (2 books in original binding) were in 1945 in the keeping of the ChemungCounty Historical Society.52