Kate’s Notes: The St. Louis Christian Advocate was published weekly by a committee of ministers for the Methodist Episcopal Church South in St. Louis. As this was a denomination-affiliated publication, notices of deaths, births, marriages, etc. of Methodist families from around the country might be published in their weekly.

From the St. Louis Christian Advocate, May 8, 1867

   HOPKINS. -- David Hopkins, the subject of this notice, was born in Western Virginia, in 1820; emigrated to Indiana, where he married Esther Gilliland, in 1840; came to Missouri in 1856; embraced religion and joined the Southern Methodist Church in 1857.
   When I recorganized our rent and trodden Chirch last summer, the class chose him for their leader, because he had “stood firm,” and in this capacity he served the Church faithfully until his death, which occurred at his home in Harrison county, March 9, 1867.
    Throughout his sickness he bore testimony to the truth of the Christian religion. I was with him near his last. His countenance brightened with a lustre more than human, as he made repeated efforts to exhort the people that crowded around his bed.
   He chose his last resting place, and selected the writer of this article to preach his funeral. His work being done, he made a feeble effort to sing, then gently closed his eyes forever on all sublunary things. He left a wife and nine children to mourn his absence. God of the fatherless, pity and protect them!
S.S. Burgin.
Harrison Co., Mo., April 19, 1867

-- transcription by Kate Maynard, 2009.