AN ACCOUNT OF THE TRUST ADMINISTERED BY THE TRUSTEES OF THE CHARITY OF EDWARD HOPKINS BY CHARLES P. BOWDITCH Secretary of the Trustees C. Privately Printed AT a meeting of the Trustees held May 6, 1886, Voted, That the Secretary be authorized to print a short account of the Hopkins bequest, and of the management of the Hopkins Trust, to be submitted in proof at the next annual meeting, or at a special meeting to be called by him. THE CHARITY OF EDWARD HOPKINS. THE HE Trust under which the Trustees of THE CHARITY OF EDWARD HOPKINS exercise their powers, was created by the will of EDWARD HOPKINS, formerly Governor of the Connecticut Colony, and by a decree in the English Court of Chancery, dated March 19, 171. EDWARD HOPKINS 1 was born near Shrewsbury, England, in 1600, was educated in the Royal Free Grammar School, and became a prosperous merchant in London. Early a convert to Puritan doctrines, he, with his fatherin-law Theophilus Eaton, John Davenport, and others, formed in 1636 a new company for emigration; and sailing from England in the "Hector," they reached Boston in June or July, 1637. They were urged strongly to remain in the Massachusetts Colony, but decided to seek a home in a more remote part of the country, induced, as it is said, to take this action both from the fear of interference by a General Governor of New England, whose coming was considered probable, and from the desire to establish a colony whose religious belief would be more in consonance with 1 References: Trumbull's History of Connecticut; Winthrop's History of New England; Barnard's American Journal of Education; Kingsley's The Two-Hundredth Anniversary of the First Settlement of the Town and Colony of New Haven. |