Lower Richland Historic Houses
Site of original house (1765) of Hopkins family - now part of fence at Old Hopkins Burying Ground
color photograph taken circa 1965, photographer unknown

The Hopkins Family Cemetery is significant as an early plantation cemetery in what later became the Hopkins community of what was then Richland District (later Richland County) and for its association with several prominent members of the Hopkins, Brevard, and Goodwyn families from the late eighteenth through the mid-nineteenth century. The Hopkins Family Cemetery is significant as well in landscape architecture for its sandstone wall and stile, quite rare in South Carolina. The Hopkins Family Cemetery was established ca. 1775, with its present historic wall and stile built ca. 1835-1837, and continues to be used for burials of members of the Hopkins and related families of Lower Richland County. The cemetery is the earliest intact resource associated with the establishment of the Hopkins community centering on John Hopkins' ca. 1764 Back Swamp Plantation, and for its association with John Hopkins (1739-1775), his son John Hopkins (1765-1832), and William Hopkins (1805-1863), grandson of the first John Hopkins, all of them of statewide significance as planters, politicians, and public figures in Richland District from the American Revolution to the Civil War. The cemetery contains sixty-nine marked graves, with headstones and footstones of granite, marble, fieldstone, or sandstone. Marble or granite ledgers, box tombs, table-top tombs, and obelisks are prominently featured, while other graves are marked by marble or granite tablets. Stones are arranged in rows, grouped by family units. The Hopkins Family Cemetery, in a lawn-like open space or field, is completely framed by a forest and hedgerows. The setting is wholly agrarian, and further reinforces the evocative quality of the site as an example of the Southern rural family cemetery as a symbolic feature of the Southern landscape.

Listed in the National Register April 8, 2010.

Overview of The Hopkins Family Cemetery
Hopkins, Richland County, South Carolina

The Hopkins Family Cemetery is significant as an early plantation cemetery in what later became the Hopkins community of what was then Richland District (later Richland County) and for its association with several prominent members of the Hopkins, Brevard, and Goodwyn families from the late eighteenth through the mid-nineteenth century. The Hopkins Family Cemetery is significant as well in landscape architecture for its sandstone wall and stile, quite rare in South Carolina. The Hopkins Family Cemetery was established ca. 1775, with its present historic wall and stile built ca. 1835-1837, and continues to be used for burials of members of the Hopkins and related families of Lower Richland County. The cemetery is the earliest intact resource associated with the establishment of the Hopkins community centering on John Hopkins' ca. 1764 Back Swamp Plantation, and for its association with John Hopkins (1739-1775), his son John Hopkins (1765-1832), and William Hopkins (1805-1863), grandson of the first John Hopkins, all of them of statewide significance as planters, politicians, and public figures in Richland District from the American Revolution to the Civil War. The cemetery contains sixty-nine marked graves, with headstones and footstones of granite, marble, fieldstone, or sandstone. Marble or granite ledgers, box tombs, table-top tombs, and obelisks are prominently featured, while other graves are marked by marble or granite tablets. Stones are arranged in rows, grouped by family units. The Hopkins Family Cemetery, in a lawn-like open space or field, is completely framed by a forest and hedgerows. The setting is wholly agrarian, and further reinforces the evocative quality of the site as an example of the Southern rural family cemetery as a symbolic feature of the Southern landscape.

Listed in the National Register April 8, 2010.

Hopkins Family Cemetery Map, Richland County, South Carolina, January 2009
National Register of Historic Places Registration Form