If you’re digging into your ancestry and stumble across a connection to the Stephen Hopkins Mayflower family tree, honestly, you’ve hit the genealogical jackpot. Most of the Pilgrims were, well, a bit stuffy. They were separatists looking for religious purity, often quiet, stern, and intensely focused on their congregation. Then there was Stephen.
He was the outsider. The guy with a "worldling" reputation.
Hopkins wasn't even a member of the Leyden congregation. He was a recruit from London brought along because he actually knew how to survive in the New World. See, he’d already been there. He survived a shipwreck in Bermuda in 1609, was sentenced to death for mutiny, talked his way out of a hanging, and eventually made it to Jamestown before returning to England. By the time he stepped onto the Mayflower in 1620, he was bringing a wife, three children, and two servants into a freezing wilderness he already respected.
The messy, fascinating branches of the Stephen Hopkins Mayflower family tree
Tracing this specific line isn't like following a straight line through a quiet meadow. It's more like navigating a dense thicket where some of the branches are on fire. Because Stephen had two wives—Mary (whose surname remains a point of scholarly debate, though often cited as Kent) and Elizabeth Fisher—the family tree splits into two very distinct paths right at the trunk.
His first set of children, Constance and Giles, were the only ones to survive from his first marriage. If you descend from them, your lineage traces back to that early, pre-Mayflower life in Hursley. Giles is a foundational figure in Eastham history. Constance? She married Nicholas Snow, and they basically populated half of Cape Cod.
Then you have the children with Elizabeth. Oceanus, famously born at sea during the crossing, sadly didn't make it past infancy. But later came Damaris, Deborah, Caleb, Ruth, and Elizabeth.
It gets complicated. Quickly.
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Genealogists often struggle with the fact that Hopkins was a bit of a rebel. He ran a tavern in Plymouth. He was frequently in trouble with the law for letting people drink on the Lord’s Day or for overcharging for liquor. This "rebellious" streak seems to weave through the generations. While other Mayflower families were focusing on becoming deacons, the Hopkins descendants were often busy being frontiersmen, merchant sailors, and sometimes, social agitators.
Why Giles and Constance are the heavy hitters
If you are looking for your name in the Stephen Hopkins Mayflower family tree, you are most likely coming through Giles or Constance.
Giles Hopkins moved out to the "outback" of the colony. He was one of the first settlers of Nauset (later Eastham). He married Catherine Whelden, and they had ten children. Ten. That’s how these trees explode. When you have ten kids in the 1600s, and eight of them survive to have eight kids of their own, you’re looking at thousands of descendants by the time the American Revolution rolls around.
Constance Hopkins is equally prolific. She married Nicholas Snow, who arrived on the Anne in 1623. They had twelve children. Yes, twelve. The "Snow" name is now inseparable from the Hopkins legacy. If you have Snows in your tree from New England, there is a massive statistical probability you’re a Hopkins descendant.
The mystery of the "Second" Damaris
Here is a detail that trips up amateur researchers: Stephen had two daughters named Damaris.
The first Damaris came over on the Mayflower as a young child. Most historians, including the experts at the General Society of Mayflower Descendants, believe she died young. Then, Stephen and Elizabeth had another daughter and named her Damaris. It was a common practice back then to "reuse" a name to honor a deceased sibling, but it makes 21st-century record-keeping a total nightmare. The second Damaris married Jacob Cooke, son of another Mayflower passenger, Francis Cooke.
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This created a "double Mayflower" line. If you descend from the Jacob Cooke and Damaris Hopkins union, you get to claim two passengers for the price of one.
Proving your spot in the lineage
You can't just find a "Hopkins" in your 1850 census and call it a day. The Mayflower Society is notoriously picky. They require "primary source" evidence for every single birth, marriage, and death in the chain.
The biggest hurdle for the Stephen Hopkins Mayflower family tree usually happens in the "mid-period"—roughly 1750 to 1850. This was a time of massive migration. Hopkins' descendants didn't stay in Plymouth. They pushed into Maine, skipped over to New York, and flooded the Ohio River Valley. When a family moved to a frontier farm in 1810, they didn't always have a town clerk nearby to record a birth.
You have to get creative.
- Land Deeds: Look for "quitclaim" deeds. When an father died, all his kids often signed a deed selling their share of the land to one brother. This is gold. It proves the parent-child relationship better than a missing birth certificate.
- Probate Records: Stephen himself left a very detailed will in 1644. He mentions his children by name, which is the cornerstone of the entire tree.
- The Silver Books: The General Society of Mayflower Descendants publishes "Mayflower Families Through Five Generations." Volume 6 is the "Stephen Hopkins" book. If you can link your ancestor to someone in that book, the Society already accepts the rest of the line back to 1620.
Common misconceptions about Stephen's origins
For a long time, people thought Stephen was from a different part of England. It wasn't until the late 20th century that researchers like Caleb Johnson definitively placed him in Hursley, Hampshire.
Another big one? The "Shakespeare Connection."
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There is a long-standing theory that Stephen Hopkins was the inspiration for the character Stephano in William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Both were ship-wrecked, both were mutinous, and both were fond of the bottle. While it’s not a "genealogical" fact you can put on a chart, it’s a standard part of the Hopkins lore. It speaks to the kind of man he was: charismatic, troublesome, and impossible to ignore.
How to trace your Hopkins line today
If you suspect you're a part of this tree, don't start at 1620. Start with yourself. Work backward.
Most people make the mistake of jumping from a Great-Grandfather named John Hopkins straight to Stephen. Don't do that. You’ll end up attaching yourself to the wrong branch. There were other Hopkins families who came over later who had nothing to do with the Mayflower.
Find your 1950 census records. Use the 1900 census to find where the family lived before the Great Depression. Look for those New England surnames that often clustered together: Snow, Cooke, Brewster, and Paine.
The Stephen Hopkins Mayflower family tree is unique because it represents the "other" side of the Plymouth story. It’s the line of the merchant, the tavern keeper, and the survivor who didn't necessarily care about the religious politics of the day but cared deeply about carved-out success in a new world.
Actionable steps for your research
- Check the Mayflower Five Generations (Silver Books): Specifically, look for Volume 6. Check your local library or a genealogical society. It is the "Bible" for Hopkins descendants.
- Verify the Hursley records: If you are researching the English origins, look into the parish registers of Hursley, Hampshire, rather than London. This is where his first marriage and the baptisms of Elizabeth and Giles occurred.
- Search the "Great Migration Begins" database: Robert Charles Anderson’s work provides a definitive look at Stephen’s life and immediate children with cited sources that the Mayflower Society trusts.
- Look for the "Snow" connection: If your tree has Snows from Eastham, Orleans, or Wellfleet, prioritize that line. It is the most common path back to Stephen.
- Join the Stephen Hopkins Heritage Society: They have specific experts who deal only with this lineage and can help bridge the gap between a "maybe" and a "proven" ancestor.
Tracing this line takes patience. You're following a man who was nearly executed for mutiny and ended up as a founding father of a colony. His descendants inherited that same grit. Keep digging through the land records and the dusty probate files; the evidence is usually there, hidden in the margins of history.