General Samuel Hopkins
GENERAL SAMUEL HOPKINS, who, as agent and attorney, in fact for Richard Henderson & Company, located and caused to be surveyed the Town of Henderson, and for whom Hopkins County is named, was a native of Albermarle County, Virginia. He was an officer of the Revolution, and bore a conspicuous part in that great struggle for freedom. He fought at the battles of Princeton, Trenton, Monmouth, Brandywine and Germantown, in the last of which he commanded a battalion of light infantry, and was severely wounded, after the almost entire loss of his command in killed and wounded. He was Lieutenant Colonel of the Tenth Regiment, Virginia, at the siege of Charleston and commanded that regiment after Colonel Parker was killed. At the surrender of Charleston, May 20th, 1780, he a corps of two thousand mounted men against the Kickapoo villages, upon the Illinois River, but being misled by the guides, after wandering over the prairies for some days to no purpose, the party returned to the Capital of Indiana. Chagrined at this result, in the succeeding November, General Hopkins led a band of infantry up the Wabash and succeeded in destroying several Indiana villages. His wily enemy to retire to Vincennes, where his troops were disbanded. At the close of this campaign, the General returned to Henderson, and settled down upon the old Spring Garden farm, one and a half or two miles out on the Owensboro Road, where he died in 1819. General Hopkins served several terms in the Kentucky Legislature and represented the Henderson District, 1813 to 1815, in Congress. He was commissioned a Major General, during the War of 1812-'15, by President Madison, who was his second cousin. General Hopkins was a double second cousin of Patrick Henry, their mothers being double first cousins. He was also a second cousin of Stephen Hopkins, who signed the Declaration of Independence, and second cousin of colonel Taylor, father of President Zachary Taylor. He was the father of Captain Sam. Goode Hopkins, of the Forty-second Regiment United States Dragoons, in the War of 1812-'15. He was also grandfather of Thomas Towles, Jr., and Mrs. R. G. Beverly and Mrs. Colonel John T. Bunch.
The History of Henderson County, Kentucky by Starling 1887 page 796;