Samuel Hopkins

author

Samuel Hopkins

1693–1755

An early New England minister and writer, he is remembered for a rare firsthand account of Native life in colonial Massachusetts and for helping bring wider attention to maple sugar in the 1750s.

1 Audiobook

An Address to the People of New-England Representing the very great importance of attaching the Indians to their interest, not only by treating them justly and kindly, but by using proper endeavours to settle Christianity among them

An Address to the People of New-England Representing the very great importance of attaching the Indians to their interest, not only by treating them justly and kindly, but by using proper endeavours to settle Christianity among them

by Samuel Hopkins

About the author

Born in Waterbury, Connecticut, in 1693, he graduated from Yale in 1718 and became the second pastor of the First Congregational Church in West Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1720. He spent much of his adult life in the ministry there.

Hopkins is best known as the author of Historical Memoirs Relating to the Housatunnuk-Indians, published in Boston in 1753. The book preserves material connected with the Housatonic people and with missionary work in Stockbridge, making it a notable colonial-era historical source.

He has also been credited with publicizing the making of maple sugar after describing Indigenous methods in a published account. For listeners interested in early American religious and regional history, his work offers a small but valuable window into 18th-century New England.