My Genealogy Hound

EDWIN R. HOPKINS M.D., a resident physician and surgeon of Silver Creek, and the surgeon of the Western New York and Pennsylvania railroad, is a son of Ezra and Catherine (Johnson) Hopkins, and was born at Westfield, Chautauqua county, New York, May 21, 1849. The Hopkins are of New England descent and were early settlers in the colonies of Connecticut and Rhode Island. Among the members of one of the Hopkins families of southern New England was one who came to Otsego county, where one of his descendants was the father of Ezra Hopkins, whose son, Dr. Hopkins, is the subject of this sketch. Ezra Hopkins was reared and learned the trade of blacksmith in his native county of Otsego, from which he removed to Westfield, where he now resides. He is now seventy-three years of age and after coming to this county was engaged in farming for several years. He married Catherine Johnson, who was a native of Ohio.

Edwin R. Hopkins attended the Westfield academy and after the completion of his full academic course he entered the office of Dr. J. M. Brown, of Westfield, as a medical student. After reading at Westfield he went to Buffalo, where he studied for two years with Dr. Julius F. Minor, professor of surgery in the medical department of the University of Buffalo, and during that time was resident physician of the general hospital where he had the benefit of actual practice in both medicine and surgery. He then entered the medical department of the University of Buffalo from which he was graduated in February, 1877. In November of the same year, he opened an office at Silver Creek, where he has remained ever since in the active practice of his profession. He has made a specialty of surgery in which his services have been in constant demand and in which he has been very successful.

Dr. Hopkins owns a vineyard of thirty-eight acres, keeps about fifty head of fine Hambletonian horses and has a steady demand for his yearling colts at one hundred dollars per head. He has been the surgeon of the Western New York and Pennsylvania Railway for five years and is a member of the Chautauqua County Medical society and vice-president of the alumni of the medical department of the University of Buffalo.