The Century Homes of Bath
The Hopkins House – The Hamaker Home
Editor’s Note: The Century Homes Committee of the Bath Township Historical Society is recognizing the “Century Homes” in Bath. Each month, a century home will be selected for a narrative and photographic exhibit at the Bath Museum until all of the century homes in Bath have been recognized. Historical Society members are undertaking this project in preparation for Bath’s Bicentennial in 2018.
This month, Bath Historical Society member Libby Bauman and current home owner Joyce Hamaker provide us with this history of The Hopkins House – The Hamaker Home.
Isaac Hopkins was an early Bath pioneer, a farmer, a cooper and a lumber-mill owner. He came to Bath from Luzerne, Penn., with a wagon drawn by two oxen in the fall of 1813. His intended destination was Indiana, but he was forced to stop due to a lame oxen.
The area on Hametown Road where he made camp became his home for life and for many generations of Hopkins to follow.
By 1815, Isaac completed a house and built a cooperage, which made wooden staved iron bound barrels for shipping goods and produce. His wife, Susanna, and their four children Lucy, Jarias, Sally and William joined him at the new home. The family grew; Isaac and Susanna had four children born in Bath, Stephen (1816), Clarissa (1819), Isaac Roswell (1825), and Susanna Maria (1831).
In 1831, Isaac Hopkins bought a saw mill in Ghent that was originally built by James Root. This mill was to be owned and operated by the Hopkins family for four generations.
Isaac Roswell Hopkins married Elizabeth Lee in 1846 and worked in the family business. They had 10 children, but only three survived to adulthood. Elizabeth died in 1869 and is buried at the Stony Hill Cemetery with their son Grant. Isaac Roswell then married Emily Briggs in 1870, and their son, Roswell Briggs Hopkins, would continue the family business.
Roswell Briggs Hopkins and his wife, Orrie, had eight children, two of which – Cecil and Paul – continued the lumber business at the Hopkins Mill until it closed in 1953.
This home is on the National Register of Historic Places and is tributed as the Roswell Hopkins Residence and Barn, circa 1830. It is possible that the oldest section of the home was built prior to 1830 by his father, Isaac. This Greek Revival house has an unusual exposed base and a coursed ashlar retaining wall. [Ashlar is dressed stone work of any type of stone. Ashlar blocks are large (13 to 15 inches in height) rectangular blocks of masonry sculpted to have square edges and even faces.] It is noted in the National Register papers that the side wing was added later. The barn, on the west side of the road, was restored and converted to a residence. This home may have been a part of the Underground Railway; unusual flooring in the lower level indicates this possibility.
The Hopkins family eventually built another house closer to the saw mill in Ghent. The original family homestead was sold to Housel Smith. Other owners of this early Bath house were Bill Kennan, Claude Rockwood, Lawrence Dean, the Scotts, Clyde Miller, Earl Horn, Bruce Folkerth and Jack Sharp. Joyce Hamaker, the current owner, has enjoyed the charm of this wonderful century home since 1995.
This early Bath home and the story of the Hopkins family have been well documented in local history, in books, newspapers and magazines, including “The History of Summit County, Ohio” (1881), by Perrin; “The Mills and Industries of the Yellow Creek Valley,” by Bath Township Historical Society and “How They Harnessed Yellow Creek,” by Nancy Terjeson. The Bath Country Journal featured this home and family in January 1981, “Recollection of Yellow Creek History”; June 1985, “Stony Hill Story”; December 1991, “Home is a Century Old!”; and March 1995, “Yellow Creek Landmarks.”
Isaac Hopkins’ unplanned settling in Bath has left this community with this wonderful century home.
