Frederic Williams Hopkins
American militia officer
Frederic Williams Hopkins (September 15, 1806 – January 21, 1874) was a Vermont lawyer and militia officer who served as Adjutant General of the Vermont Militia.
Early life
Frederic Williams Hopkins was born in Pittsford, Vermont on September 15, 1806. He graduated from Middlebury College in 1828, studied law, and became an attorney in Rutland.
Legal career
He was a long time Rutland Justice of the Peace, and served as Rutland County's Register of Probate from 1832 to 1836 and 1838 to 1839. Hopkins served as Clerk of the Rutland County Courts from 1839 to 1868, and was an organizer of the Rutland Union School District in 1855. He was also an organizer of Rutland's first volunteer fire department.
Military career
Active in the militia during a period between wars when interest was on the wane, he served as Vermont's Adjutant and Inspector General from 1837 to 1852.
In the 1830s and 1840s Hopkins was part of a group of individuals interested in reorganizing and revitalizing the state militias, which had become increasingly dormant in the years following the War of 1812. This group, including Franklin Pierce, Alden Partridge, Alonzo Jackman, and Truman B. Ransom, held seminars to discuss tactics, strategy and recruiting, and carry out maneuvers and drills in an effort to improve unit readiness.
He spoke the eulogy at the memorial service for Truman B. Ransom, the President of Norwich University and a militia officer who was killed in the Mexican–American War while leading his regiment at Chapultepec in 1848.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q15429468. VIAF identifies the subject as 306074713. The Library of Congress control number is n85363521. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1806, 1874, 1828 and 1832.
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This entry incorporates text from “Frederic Williams Hopkins” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.