FRANK P. HOPWOOD
1916 History of Oklahoma

There is an interesting chapter of Oklahoma history that should be written in all essential details, -- a chapter relating to the call of opportunity in Oklahoma to young men of the North and East, and the response of these young men to the call, with due, reference to their activities residence in the vital new commonwealth. The decade preceding 1915 was marked by the immigration of the young men from older states of the Union. Every community has one or more of this class. Most of them have made investments and become a very part personally of the community life. Out of colleges and universities many of them have come, and nearly all have brought experience in business or the professions. The adaptation of their ideas to those of the community and the reforms and advances they have quietly but surely instituted have done much to conserve civic and material progress of stable order. These men are vigorous and refreshing, and commercial and industrial activities have responded to their touch. They are creating better conditions and giving to Oklahoma staunch and distinctively individual type of citizenship that can be claimed by no other state. The political economist could here find subject matter for a volume as interesting as any that has ever been written on the subject. The coming of these men has tended to energizing the progressive activities on the part of young men who have been reared to a greater or less extent in this section of the country. The activities of the two elements have made a harmonious blend that is interesting to contemplate.

A vigorous and popular representative of the class of new-comers in Oklahoma is Frank P. Hopwood, who is engaged in the real-estate, loan and insurance business at Atoka, judicial center of the county of the same name. He is a native of Uniontown, Pennsylvania, and is a son of Hon. Robert F. Hopwood, who represents the Twenty-third district of Pennsylvania in the United States Congress. Frank P. Hopwood settled at Atoka, Oklahoma, in 1911. He made investments in land and purchased the oldest insurance business in the old town of Atoka. To this he added a farm-loan business, and in the three lines of enterprise he has extended his business activities over the entire county, as well as into parts of adjoining counties. He and his brother Samuel are the owners of valuable farm lands that they are improving and which they are devoting to diversified agriculture and the growing of live stock.

Mr. Hopwood was born in the year 1884. His father has for many years been a prominent lawyer and political leader in his section of the old Keystone State. He bears the reputation of being a leader in the movement for clean politics, and 1914 he was nominated for Congress without opposition, on an agreement that there was to be no fighting and no illegitimate promise-making in the campaign. He had been defeated for Congress in 1884, because he refused to subscribe to a system involving money considerations and the making of undue campaign promises. The Hopwood family was founded in Pennsylvania prior to the opening of the nineteenth century. In 1769 the original progenitor laid out in Pennsylvania the Town of Woodstock, the name of which was subsequently changed to Hopwood. This pioneer settler removed to Pennsylvania from Stratford County, Virginia, where the original representatives of the name settled upon coming to the American colonies. Rice G. Hopwood was county attorney Fayette County, Pennsylvania, in 1837. John MILLER, an ancestor of Frank P. Hopwood on the maternal side, was likewise a pioneer in Pennsylvania, where he settled about the same time as did the first Hopwood in that commonwealth. Jacob Miller, of a later generation, became one of the leading figures in political affairs in the southwestern part of Pennsylvania.

The parents of Mr. Hopwood still reside at Uniontown, Pennsylvania, and concerning their other children the following brief data may consistently be entered: Samuel C. is associated with his brother, Frank P., in the various business activities which they control from their headquarters in the thriving Town of Atoka, Oklahoma; Mrs. Jasper T. SHEPLER still resides at Uniontown, Pennsylvania, where her husband is a representative business man; Miss Edith remains at the parental home; Mrs. David W. KAINE is the wife of a business man at Uniontown, Pennsylvania, in which place Robert F., Jr., the youngest of the children, remains at the parental home.

The early education of Frank P. Hopwood was acquired in the public schools of Pennsylvania, and this discipline was supplemented by his attending the Pennsylvania Military College at Chester. After leaving school he engaged in civil engineering work, in the employ of the H. C. Frick Coke Company. In 1904 he assisted in the building of an electric interurban railway from Honessen to Belle Vernon, Pennsylvania. The next year he became assistant engineer for the South Fayette Coke Company, and while in the employ of this corporation he superintended the construction of two coke plants. Later he became associated with the Ramage & Gates Contracting Company, and in this connection he had charge of the construction of more than 100 coke ovens for the Elkins Syndicate of West Virginia. He next became superintendent of the plant of the Whyle Coke Company, and for this company he supervised the construction of an entirely new plant. Later he entered the employ of the Whitney-Kemmerer Company, of New York, which corporation he represented one year in Cincinnati and one year in Pittsburgh. Upon severing this association he came to Oklahoma, in 1911, as previously noted. He and his brother are associated in the ownership of 1,000 acres of fine black land on Boggy Bottoms, and are bringing to bear the most approved modern methods in the improving of this property.

Mr. Hopwood was the first treasurer, of the Atoka Club, a commercial organization with which he continues to be actively identified, and in his native city in Pennsylvania he is still enrolled as a member of the Uniontown Country Club. He is affiliated with Benevolent & Protective Order of Elks, and both he and his wife hold membership in the Methodist Episcopal Church,
South.

In 1913 was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Hopwood to Miss Lucy LANKFORD, whose father was a pioneer physician of Atoka, he being now engaged in the practice of his profession in the City of San Antonio, Texas; his brother, J. D. Lankford, served as state bank commissioner of Oklahoma under the administrations of Governors Cruce and Williams.

Transcribed by Lee Ann Collins, January 1, 2000.

Source: A Standard History of Oklahoma, Joseph B. Thoburn, 1916; Vol. 3, p 1138, 1139. (Used with permission of OKGenWeb)