Katharine Hopkins Chapman

Katharine Hopkins Chapman (, Hopkins; pen name, Katharine Hope; March 4, 1870/72/73 - May 21, 1930) was an author and historian of the American South. Born in Selma, transplanted to the booming time of Anniston in its infancy, grafted by marriage into the crude conditions of Bessemer's early days, a frequent visitor to Mobile and Montgomery, Chapman was well equipped to delineate Alabama characters and scenes, and in her stories she depicted life among the well-to-do American Southern people, her first writings being signed "Katharine Hope" in deference for her father's scruples against a woman's name appearing in print except at her marriage or death. By 1921, she had published 89 short stories in leading magazines. A short memoir appeared in The Editor in 1913.

Early life and education Katharine (nickname, "Katie") Glass Hopkins was born March 4, 1870, in Selma, Dallas County, Alabama. Her parents were Thomas Holmes and Mary Elizabeth (Glass) Hopkins, the former a native of Danville, Virginia, and later a resident of Anniston, having taken an active interest in that city's progress since its inception in 1880. In 1859, he removed to Uniontown, Alabama and enlisted as a private in the Canebrake Rifle Guard, Company D. Fourth Alabama regiment, serving until General Robert E. Lee's surrender. He was a son of Reuben and Julia Augusta (Holmes) Hopkins, of Danville, Virginia, where Reuben Hopkins engaged in the banking business and also owned an extensive tobacco plantation nearby. His second wife, Julia A. Holmes, was a school teacher from New England, a representative of the same family as Oliver Wendell Holmes. Her abolition principles made slaveholding unpleasant for the family and eventually Reuben Hopkins sacrificed his tobacco lands and slaves and moved west, being tendered a public banquet and silver service on his departure. He settled in Iowa in 1857 and purchased land where Dubuque now stands but died suddenly before his titles were validated. Chapman's maternal grandparents were Benjamin Alexander and Catharine (Morrison) Glass, who owned and occupied a plantation from Selma, near the Valley Creek Presbyterian church, both belonging to North Carolina families who came to Alabama territory about 1816. The colony were Scotch Presbyterians and erected the first brick church in this state. Mr. Glass gave the land on which it is located and contributed liberally to its erection. He was a ruling elder of the church, a planter and philanthropist. The Alexanders, Morrisons and Hopkinses were all descended from signers of the Declaration of Independence and also the Mecklenburg Declaration. taking honors in English and Latin, and her essay on "The desirability of an international copyright", was widely copied and praised. She also completed the Chautauqua literary and scientific course and was graduated at Chautauqua, New York, in 1904.

Personal life On October 8, 1891, at Shelby, Alabama, she married Dr. John Thomas Chapman (1863-1932),

Katharine Hopkins Chapman died May 21, 1930, in Selma, Alabama. "Sara Haardt", The Bookman, 1926 "Lectures and Talks on Writing Technique: Illustrated by Original Readings Offered to Colleges, Chautauquas, Writers' and Literary Clubs", 1926 (text)

Plays Christmas Topsey-turkey: A Comedy in One Act, 1924 (text) A Quilt for a Battleship: A One-act Confederate Play, 1925 (text)

Books Love's way in Dixie : some short stories from Cupid's favorite field, 1905 (text) Sketch of Dr. La Fayette Guild, medical director and chief surgeon of the Army of Northern Virginia, 1909 (text) The Fusing Force: An Idaho Idyl, 1911 (text) The Moulting Sea-gull, 1920 (text) Brown Girls Or Green?: Christmas Topsey-turkey, Also a Queer Distinction, 1923 (text)