Category: Charles Rossiter Hoppin

Ancestors/California History/Charles Rossiter Hoppin/Emily Anna Bacon Hoppin/Escape Rooms/Family Geneology/Historical Archives/Historical Research/Yolo, California

From Yard Sale to Escape Room: the Journey Home of an Historic Farmhouse Photo

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I received an intriguing email from a “Brian” in Michigan last August:


I have a 13 x 10 inch framed picture of the Charles Hoppin house that I purchased from a yard sale in Michigan. I did a Google search based on the photo and found your website. On the back of the photo it tells who is on the porch and in the yard.


The homestead photo just had a certain vibration about it that sparked curiosity and imagination; and that is one of the reasons that drew me to it and why I searched the Internet to identify it. I just thought I would let you know that I appreciated knowing where the house was located and stories behind it.

This unknown homestead photo just had a certain vibration about it that sparked curiosity and imagination

I wrote him back:
Hello Brian, What a surprise to hear that you found the family’s old California farmhouse at a Michigan yard sale! The Hoppin family was originally from Niles Michigan, and one great-granddaughter still lives in Muskegon, Michigan. You may have read on my website that this farmhouse plays a big part in my novel, “Heart Wood- Four Women, for the Earth, for the Future.” That was a fictional account inspired by family stories. Now I’m going back and writing the actual biography of my great-grandmother Emily Hoppin who was a successful farmer and women’s activist in Yolo in the Northern California Sacramento Valley in the late1800s. She is standing to the right in the photograph.

Nearly everyone in my family has a treasured copy of this historic photograph, thanks to my sister Emily and her then-husband Chris who made copies of the originals back in the late 1970s. But how in the world did this one end up in a yard sale across the country in Michigan? I wrote to my cousin Nancy who lives in Muskegon, figuring she would probably have an answer.

Emily Anna Bacon Hoppin
Hoppin Farmhouse 1885
Charles Rossiter Hoppin

Nancy replied:

We have two framed photos of Emily and Charles Hoppin that my parents had hanging next to the framed photo of the Hoppin Farmhouse for years and years in California. When Mom moved to Michigan, she had them reframed and hung them together. Sometime during her many moves and downsizing, the photo of the farmhouse came up missing. We figure it must have mistakenly gotten in with the give-away stuff (many grandkids and friends trying to be helpful). I’m sure it’s the same framed photo because the label of the picture framing shop is on the back of all three framed photos .

Feeling just a tad possessive about our family’s farmhouse picture, and curious about what Brian planned to do with the photograph, I wrote him back.

His answer surprised me:

The reason that the photo came into my possession is that I bought it to use in my business. I own an Escape Room in Muskegon (Lakeshore Quest) and I purchase unique items that add a richness to my room’s design and story. This particular photo is the foundation to one of the themes I am working on.

Well, well, the old farmhouse photo is in an Escape Room – I hope it’s having fun!

Escape Rooms, for those who don’t know, are group experiences where you’re immersed in a themed room to search for and uncover hidden clues, codes, puzzles that will help you escape, usually within an hour. I could just envision Brian’s customers scouring the farmhouse picture for clues.

I asked Brian to tell me more.

The objects must fit the theme of the room and if it can be used as a puzzle, that’s even better. The best objects come from antique stores, auctions and estate sales. We especially love objects that have a history, tell a story, or just work well as “eye candy”. We want our guests to be as fully immersed in the background story of the room as possible.


The theme of this Escape Room called “Mortimer’s Mansion” was an old Victorian style house that was due to be torn down; it was rumored that the previous owner had a treasure hidden inside the house that no one had ever found. Therefore, the goal of the room is to find the treasure before the home is torn down.

“Mortimer’s Mansion” (Lakeshore Quest Escape Room)


The photo had a great deal of mystery behind it that made us both wonder who these folks were and what their lives were like; there was a little information on the back side of the photo but most of it was left to our imaginations. Over time that made me more curious, and I didn’t want to just toss it into a storage box; this mystery deserved a little more investigation.

Knowing that technology is so powerful, I took the chance that doing a Google photo search may turn up something. And Bingo, it did!! I found your website with the identical photo and a great deal more information. I contacted you and let you know that we found the Hoppin Farmhouse photo.

Hello again from California, I replied.

That farmhouse picture has been around! Nearly every family descendant has a copy; it’s posted on my website (shirleydickard.com), and included in the University of California Davis Archives and Special Collections. In fact, I’m just getting ready to post a blog about “Setting Foot on my Ancestor’s Soil” – about finding the original farmhouse property and walking it with the current almond farmer there.

I then suggested to Brian that if he’s ever finished using the photograph and would consider donating it the Yolo County Historical Archives, they would be very interested in having it.

Long story short, Brian recently contacted me that they were finished using the photo; my cousin Nancy picked it up at the Lakeshore Quest Escape Room in Muskegon Michigan, and mailed it back to its original home in Yolo County, California.

Heather Lanctot, Coordinator of the Yolo County Archives and Historical Collection now has it documented and safely stored in its vast collection of historical documents for family genealogists and future researchers to enjoy finding.

If you have family artifacts that the next generation isn’t interested in, consider donating them to an appropriate Historical Archives collection.

Heather Lanctot, Coordinator of the Yolo County Archives and Historical Collection with a photo of the historic Hoppin farmhouse, Yolo California 1885.


I am currently working on the Biography of Emily Hoppin, the Life and Times of a Yolo Pioneer and Women’s Activist (and also the inspiration for the fictional Eliza in Heart Wood). You’re welcome to sign up for my Blog and Newsletter to follow my progress on this and other topics I care about.

Heart Wood  – Four Women, for the Earth, for the Future can be purchased at your local bookstore and Online.

California History/Charles Rossiter Hoppin/Emily Anna Bacon Hoppin/Historical Research/Yolo, California

What did he whisper in her ear?

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Emily Anna Bacon Hoppin, 1874
Charles Rossiter Hoppin, 1874

I knew the story well – retold  hundreds of times in my family – that in 1874, my great-grandfather traveled from California back to his hometown in Niles, Michigan, to ask my great-grandmother to marry him and return to his ranch in Yolo, California.

Simple facts. That is, until I started to do research for her Biography to reconstruct what might have actually happened.  Writing fiction is fun. You can just make up events, people, and conversations to suit your story, as I did in Heart Wood, a fictionalized inspiration of my Great-grandmother’s life.

But writing an historical Biography is like writing with one hand tied behind your back. There’s so many constraints: everything must be documented and verified, with no conjecture, imagining, or creativity . . . Darn.

But I’m always up for learning new things, and now my brain synapses are tingling with this new challenge.

Here’s my dilemma.

The scene opens in 1874 with Emily Anna Bacon, age 20, now at the end of her first six months of teaching high school in Niles, Michigan. She’s worked hard to get here – especially as a female in the late-1800s when it was more common for a girl to go to finishing school after eighth grade to learn the home arts and attract a husband. But Emily grew up in a household that valued education – her four brothers were all attorneys and her father a district judge. So in 1869, she enrolled in the Michigan Female Seminary in Kalamazoo, 75 miles from home. From the course catalogue, I know that she graduated in 1873 with knowledge of Latin, Botany, Algebra, Essay Writing, Geography, the Bible, Physiology, History, Government, English Literature, Trigonometry, Chemistry, Art History, Astronomy, and more. Whew!

Missing are her grades and any personal letters or journal, so I can’t write how she felt about her education, but I do know by comparing dates, that her father died about her first week of starting school. That must have affected her deeply.

Enter Charles Rossiter Hoppin in 1874, an old family friend recently returned to Niles from the California farm he built during the Gold Rush. What did he say to convince her to marry a 47-year-old Scottish bachelor farmer and leave her teaching job, four years of education, widowed mother, brothers, sisters, and girlfriends – to travel to the unknown of California?

I envision Biographies as like Weavings – comprised of threads, colors, patterns, textures, and holes. The more I research, the more holes I encounter. I’m not an historian, but I’m learning how to work with these gaps in information. Sometimes with enough sleuthing, I can dig up some facts (thanks to the professional Archivists who’ve helped me). Sometimes I look around at what others in similar situations have done (such as examples from other similar women’s diaries). I can also work around the hole by not mentioning it at all. If the reader won’t notice, this is often the easiest.

Still, I do wonder what he whispered in her ear. . .

I am currently working on the Life and Times of Emily Hoppin – Yolo Pioneer and Activist who I first introduced as the inspiration for Eliza in my eco-novel, Heart Wood – Four Women, for the Earth, for the Future. 

Website: shirleydickard.com

Contact the author at: heartwoodnovel@gmail.com


Heart Wood can be purchased at your local book store and online at Amazon

California History/Charles Rossiter Hoppin/Emily Anna Bacon Hoppin/Father Junipero Serra/Historical Archives/Historical Research/Land Acknowledgements/Mexican Land Grants/Patwins/Yolo, California

Acknowledging Who Owns the Land?

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I had an eye-opening moment recently while researching the history of my ancestor’s ranch for the book I’m currently writing. My original search was to find out the price my Great-grandfather Charles Hoppin paid in the 1850s for a quarter of the Rancho Rio de Jesus Maria land grant in Yolo, Northern California.

Curious, I decided to trace the land even further back – and – it’s not what I learned in school! What follows is the short version of what I found. The rest of the story will be included in “The Life and Times of Emily Hoppin,” the biography of my pioneer, activist, Great-grandmother.

If you start with the land, you’ll find that it existed without human inhabitants for unknown eons. It wasn’t until the Ice Age that humans crossed a bridge of land between Siberia and Alaska and continued down the continent. In their book Yolo History, A Land of Changing Patterns, Shipley Waters and Joann Larkey suggest that human activity was present in Yolo County at least by 2,000 B.C. The Wintun (includes Patwins) people arrived in the upper Sacramento Valley about 1,500 years ago. They were the first peoples in the Yolo area. They have never, ever, ceded this land to anyone!

History books have traditionally overlooked this little detail. As a fourth grader studying California history back in the 1950s, I was so enamored by the flashy images of Spanish Conquistadores in the early 1800s and the virtuous Franciscan Father Junipero Serra who built a series of Missions from San Diego to San Francisco, each a day’s ride apart. Their plan was to protect Spain’s holdings in Alta California and to convert the savage heathens.

Here is what students in 1957 were taught in the California Textbook, “California Rancho Days:”

     “Indian women helped with the work in the house. The Dona taught them to cook the Spanish food. They spun wool into thread and wove it into cloth. Some were taught to sew. None of the Indians were given money for their work. What would they do with money? Did not the ranchero give them food, clothing, and a place to live?”

 It wasn’t until the 1970s that we started hearing the Indian’s version of this Missionization. Their reality was that missions were plantation-like estates with a workforce of enslaved Indians who had been ripped from their land, homelife, language, culture, and health, often beaten and tortured into submission. They are still struggling to recover to this day.

The Spanish government gave away massive tracts of their surrounding land to Spanish soldiers as favors for being stationed in such a remote outpost. By 1846, Spanish mission lands were owned by 800 private rancheros.

When Spain lost the war to Mexico in 1821, the Mexican governor Jose Figueroa determined that mission lands should rightfully return to the Indians rather than colonists. He died a year later (note: research this!) and conveniently, the land was distributed to private Mexican citizens. The era of Land Grant Ranchos began. We see the vestiges in today’s names such as Rancho Cordova and Rancho Murieta, although most names today have dropped the “Rancho” and are now La Brea, Santa Anita, etc.  Interestingly, many cities were conveniently founded on top of indigenous sites and still bear the footprint of the rancho land use.

Rancho Rio de Jesus Maria Land Grant
(From the Yolo County Archives and Historical Collection)

When my Great-grandfather bought a quarter (8,000 acres) of the Mexican Land Grant called The Rancho Rio de Jesus Maria near Cache Creek in Yolo in the early 1850s, it had been previously owned by a naturalized Mexican citizen, then a European settler.

And yet….

The Wintun nation never conceded this land to anyone. After struggling from near extinction by the Spanish, Mexican, and European settlers, the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation is now reclaiming its heritage, culture, language and independence, and has created a Land Acknowledgement reminder that we are on their traditional land today.

Public Land Acknowledgements:  I had never heard of these until 2021 when I gave a webinar on Emily Hoppin for the Yolo County Library. Before my presentation, a statement was read acknowledging that we (in Yolo) are on the traditional lands of the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation.

In 2019, the Yocha Dehe Tribal Council created this formal statement:

We should take a moment to acknowledge the land on which we are gathered. For thousands of years, this land has been the home of Patwin people. Today, there are three federally recognized Patwin tribes: Cachil DeHe Band of Wintun Indians of the Colusa Indian Community, Kletsel Dehe Band of Wintun Indians, and Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation. The Patwin people have remained committed to the stewardship of this land over many centuries. It has been cherished and protected, as elders have instructed the young through generations. We are honored and grateful to be here today on their traditional lands.

Land Acknowledgements are being replicated throughout the state. Closer to where I live in the northern Sierra Nevada, the Nevada City Rancheria Nisenan Tribe created their Land Acknowledgement.

Today, I may have legal ownership of my parcel of land, but these Land Acknowledgements remind me of the real history behind that ownership. In truth, it’s better to consider myself a caretaker rather than owner of the land.

California History/Charles Rossiter Hoppin/Emily Anna Bacon Hoppin/Historical Fiction/Yolo, California

Creating Historical Fiction

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Note to reader: I am struck by the irony of my post Creating Historical Fiction that I planned for today. Start with the facts, I write, but if you want a richer, more powerful story, try converting your story into a fictionalized version. We’re living in a time when a president is attempting to stay in power by creating a fictional version of the election. Future historians will help us understand the facts and how we responded thereafter. (SD – 1/12/21)

A thin, wavering curtain separates historical facts from the imagination of fiction. Research files may bulge with historical documents that provide the framework for fictionalized ancestors, but imagination and inspiration weave them into a deeper story.

Start with the Facts

Nearly every family has colorful characters and fascinating stories. You can probably think of a few yourself; maybe you have considered writing about them. But how? When I first became interested in my gold-rush era great-grandmother, I decided to write a biographical account of what I knew about how she came to California, ran an 800-acre farm, and worked to better the condition of her community.

Facts evolve into Fiction

At some point, I realized there was a larger story to tell – not just of her life and work, but how it related to the present generation, and even to our unknown future generations who will inherit our stories. I was encouraged to stretch into the realm of historical fiction. Gary Noy, editor of The Illuminated Landscape, A Sierra Nevada Anthology, agreed that fictionalized history carries an emotional resonance that far exceeds the presentation of facts. By writing a novel inspired by historical facts, I was free to tell a deeper, unhindered story.

From Fiction Back to Fact

Like the tip of an iceberg, fictionalized characters are more believable because of the bulk of research that lies beneath their story. Now that my fictionalized version is published, I return full circle to all the facts that launched Heart Wood. In conducting years of research, I’ve been delighted to know my great-grandmother as a larger-than-life thinker, writer, and activist. This research is now posted on my website under “Historical Research.” I am pleased to share my findings with my greater family and to make it available to the public for historical research.

I invite you browse the research that went into the creation of the past in Heart Wood. Perhaps it will be an inspiration to create something from your own family’s story!

Emily and Charles Hoppin (Yolo, California, 1850-1915)

The ancestors whose story inspired me to create Eliza and Silas in Heart Wood

  • Wedding Portrait of Emily Anna Bacon Hoppin 1874
  • Wedding portrait of Charles Rossiter Hoppin, 1874

I have recently posted over 25 documents and photographs on my website , including:  

Charles Hoppin’s letters home from the Gold Rush (1850-1863)

An oral history with my grandmother, Dorothea Hoppin Moffett, about growing up on the Yolo Ranch with her mother, Emily Hoppin

Pages of Emily Hoppin’s personal scrapbook (1890s-1915) with news clippings of her campaign for president of the California Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1915

Photographs, maps, and selected documents from internet research

Conducting historical research has changed dramatically over the years

The Internet was unheard of when I first started investigating my family’s history in the late 1980s. To locate and read documents back then, I had to get in my car and travel to distant libraries and archives. Today, it’s a different world: my recent internet search for “Emily Hoppin, Yolo” found over 240 references to her in the California Digitalized Newspaper Collection!

AND…without the invaluable assistance of the Yolo County Archives and Records Center, Emily’s scrapbook would still be sitting on my bookshelf.  I am grateful to Coordinator Heather Lanctot who scanned each page with their large-sized scanner so that the scrapbook can be read on my website, and in time, will be a permanent public record at The Yolo Archives. Like all volunteer-based organizations during this time of COVID, The Yolo Archives appreciates donations (bit.ly/fyca-join).

I hope you will enjoy browsing my Historical Research page and perhaps be inspired to be creative with your own family’s history. If you’re curious about writing historical fiction, traditional memoir, or a biography, you can find a wealth of support on the internet, on-line classes, writing coaches, and books.

“Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges into the past.” – James Joyce, Ulysses

Heart Wood can be purchased online and at all bookstores

Thank you for supporting independently-published authors and local bookstores!

HERE: To support your local, independent bookstore

HERE: To purchase on Amazon (ebook and paperback)

www.shirleydickard.com

California History/Charles Rossiter Hoppin/Climate Change/Dystopic Future/Eco-Novel/Emily Anna Bacon Hoppin/Environmental Concerns/Feminine Power/Yolo, California

Open House at shirleydickard.com

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You’re invited to an Open House at the newly remodeled website dedicated to my eco-novel: Heart Wood – Four Women, for the Earth, for the Future.

Years ago, when Heart Wood was in its infancy, I created my first website and blog. Having since outgrown the space, I’ve been working with a web designer to give it an updated look with new rooms and décor. Please stroll around and take a look!

There is one last room I want to remodel and I’m hoping readers can help me. If you click on the “Research” tab, you’ll see tabs for Past, Present, and Future. These are where I’m gathering Present data and evidence of mankind’s cumulative impact on the Future, as well as my family’s historical documents from the Past.

If you’ve read Heart Wood, you may share my concern for what we’re doing to our air, water, food, and earth, and the impact on our health and longevity – especially of our children. You can contribute by sending articles and links that I can post. Discussions welcome!

Thank you to Sky (who actually spent her first years in the mythical “Luna Valley”) for this first article: Why the World is Becoming Allergic to Food  https://getpocket.com/explore/item/why-the-world-is-becoming-more-allergic-to-food?utm_source=pocket-newtab.  Cue the rise of Pharm.food!

For history buffs, especially my family, I will post all the documentation I gathered about my great-grandparents, Emily and Charles Hoppin of Yolo, California – the inspiration for the characters of Eliza and Silas in Heart Wood. In my research, I found previously unknown speeches, writings, and interviews with Emily Hoppin. She was a woman before her time and now, 100 years later, her voice can be heard! I invite anyone with information about Charles and Emily Hoppin to add to this documentation on my website.

Please sign the guest book by leaving a comment. If you see any corners that need attention, let me know. I’m learning how websites nowadays must work across all types of screens: computers, tablets, and mobile devices – rather like a three-dimensional tic-tac-toe board! My appreciation to Katie (who also grew up in the “Luna Valley”) and her design team at Urban Sherpa Marketing: www.urbansherpa.marketing 

California History/Charles Rossiter Hoppin/Emily Anna Bacon Hoppin/Gold Rush

Family Myth-Makers

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A cherished story in my family is that Great Grandma came to California by covered wagon during the 1849 Gold Rush.  Only she didn’t.  Hard as I try to hold on to the version of my great grandparents making  a tortuous six-month wagon “road trip” from Michigan to California to start  a new life together, the evidence just isn’t there.

Nonetheless, I refuse to be swayed by facts. So what if dusty historical biographies and frayed yellow obituaries record that it was actually 1874 when Emily Anna Bacon Hoppin accompanied her new husband, Charles, back to his 800 acre ranch in Yolo, California. She might even have taken the new transcontinental railroad, recently opened in 1869 for all we know.  But inside of me is a small child who won’t release her fingers around a favorite shiny pebble. In my heart, Great Grandmother did come to California by covered wagon during the Gold Rush.

“It’s the storyteller’s right to embellish the story,” my Grandma Dot-Dot once confessed as she spun yet another legendary tale about her mother’s life in the late 1800’s. I interviewed Grandma before she died and transcribed her stories into a book which I gave to the extended family. It was a meritage of memory and facts. From her child’s-eye perspective of early California ranch life, Grandma fashioned her mother into a larger-than-life figure who was not to be reckoned with. “Emily Hoppin was known as a woman who stood by her principles,” Grandma told us. “Why she and her women friends threatened to close down the local saloons so many times, they were known as the Three Musketeers. Grandma delighted in planting family stories into our fertile imaginations. She was our myth-maker.

I learned from Grandma Dot-Dot that stories are more important than facts.  Stories nurture the heart; facts languish in the head.  This is why I describe the novel I’m working on as part historical fiction, part memoir, and part future-fantasy. Despite my struggle to be historically accurate, I’m finding that the family’s mythology is much more enduring.

In my next blog, I’ll describe my discovery of an historical detail while traveling through the Nevada desert – a fact that somehow never made it into the family’s records or mythology.

© All materials copyright Shirley DicKard, 2015, except as otherwise noted.