All about Henry Hopwood

In John's research he came across the Hopwood name on a few things. Apparently Henry Hopwood was the founder of Echuca.

Henry Hopwood 1813 – 1 January 1869 was an English convict who established the town of Echuca in Victoria, Australia.

He was arrested in 1834 for receiving stolen rolls of silk, and sentenced to 14 years' transportation to Van Diemen's Land. A persuasive and manipulative character, within a year of arriving in the colony, Hopwood had been appointed as a police constable.

However, he often found himself in trouble, mainly due to dalliances with women, and in 1839, he was sentenced to two years' servitude at the Port Arthur penal settlement for 'aiding and abetting the abduction of his master's daughter'. He was eventually released and, in 1846, granted a full pardon after having served 12 years of his original sentence. During his time as a convict, Henry met Marth Bolton, a free woman formerly of Liverpool, Lancashire and with her had a daughter, Alice Bolton Hopwood, born on the 4 January 1844 at Morven, Tasmania.

Hopwood migrated to the fledgling colony of Port Phillip in Melbourne where he worked his way north to the Murray River in 1848. Here he found work in a tallow plant, boiling down animal carcasses to extract their fat and oils, eventually becoming foreman. By 1850 the shrewd Hopwood noted the increasing numbers of drovers and farmers in the area and used his savings to build both a hotel and a punt.

He charged a small fee for river crossings and profited from drinkers at his hotel. By 1858 he had almost single-handedly expanded the lonely riverbank site into a small town, complete with a pontoon bridge, newspaper, school, warehouses, and vineyards. The following year Hopwood constructed the Bridge Hotel, a more stylish double-storey brick building that still stands today.

I guess in our free time ( ha ha) we need to do some research to find out if we are related.Read more