William was born on the 22nd of September 1829 in what became Campbell County, Georgia. The County was formed in 1830 from Cherokee land.  William was the eleventh child of a dozen born to Hampton and Susannah.

1830 map of Campbell County, GA

In the year 1851 he married Nancy Caroline STYLES on the 21st day of March.

Children blessed their union and added to the population of 8,301 people living in Campbell County in the year  1860.  Their family is recorded on that year’s Census of the same county with their children as follows:

1. Sealy A. age 8, a girl (this name is an important clue to past generations)
2. Henry T. age 7
3. William C. age 4
4. Nancy A.R. age 2

It was during this year the Civil War began.

William HOPKINS died in Perryville Kentucky on the 9th of October 1862.

From the website Perryvillebattlefield.org we read,

“The Battle of Perryville, also known as the Battle of Chaplin Hills, took place on October 8, 1862. Union and Confederate forces clashed just west of Perryville, a small market town located southwest of Lexington in the Commonwealth’s central bluegrass, as a culmination of the Kentucky Campaign of the American Civil War. The battle was the climax of a hard, six-week campaign . . . the battle ended inconclusively. . . battle was widely considered a strategic victory for the Union.”  Read more about this battle. The state of Kentucky has made this mid state battleground a State Park with interesting amenities should you be in the area.”

Because no marker has been located for William, he was probably buried with hundreds of other Confederate Soldiers who died in Perryville.  The following sorrowful description from Waymarking.com may apply to this ancestor:

“While the Union army buried their own dead in regimental plots, the Confederates remained unburied. Within days, hogs were rooting up the bodies and hundreds of buzzards and crows scoured the battlefield.

Henry P. Bottom, a farmer who owned most of the land upon which the battle was fought, organized a civilian burial detail for his property. Bottom, his slaves, and a number of his neighbors buried most of the Southern bodies in two large pits. Bottom recorded as many names as he could, but most of the soldiers buried here remain unknown to this day. It is likely that around 200 hundred soldiers are buried in this mass grave.”