The Hopkins family were part of a neighborhood of free blacks who lived in the city block bounded to the north and south by Elizabeth Street and Market Street, and to the west and east by North High Street and Liberty Street, respectively. In June 1860, Augustus Hopkins, a 60 year old Virginia-born laborer, lived with his 55 year old wife Sarah, as well as two young people named Margaret and John Hopkins, aged 5 and 4 years old. The family resided along North High Street northeast of the intersection of Market Street. Margaret and John were likely either children or grandchildren of Augustus and Sarah.

 

Much like Malinda Hall, Augustus' background is not well-known. He was likely the African American man known only as "Augustus" who was registered as a free man in the Rockingham County Court system on February 4, 1832 by Archibald Hopkins. If this was indeed him, he stood five-feet-seven-inches tall, was covered in scars, and had been born a free man in Virginia.

 

On August 28, 1856, Augustus purchased the house he lived in in 1860 from another free black man, William Strother. Only a month later, Hopkins paid $150 for another house and half-acre property located a block away at the corner of North High Street and Wolfe Street. Ironically, when Hopkins found he was unable to pay the mortgage on that half-acre lot in 1858, he sold half of the property to the aforementioned William Strother. The owning of multiple homes was somewhat common among Harrisonburg's free black property owners, who often either rented them, or sold them outright, to other free African Americans. 

 

Augustus died sometime from 1866-1872, and his heirs were subsequently brought to trial over the debts he incurred trying to pay for the property at the corner of North High Street and Wolfe Street. The Hopkins family lost the case and were forced to sell the lot in order to pay off his debt. Today, the area where the family resided in 1860 is covered up by the Otterbein United Methodist Church, which bought up much of the formerly-residential neighborhood in the early 1900s.