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Johns Hopkins ( May 19 , 1795 – December 24 , 1873 ) was a Baltimore businessman, a Quaker , an Abolitionist , and a philanthropist. He left substantial bequests in his Will to found the University , Teaching Hospital , a training school for female nurses, now the Johns Hopkins School Of Nursing , and the Johns Hopkins Colored Children Orphan Asylum . These institutions were all posthumously founded, the colored children orphan asylum in 1875, the university in 1876, the hospital and nursing school in 1889 and the medical school in 1893. The Johns Hopkins Colored Children Orphan Asylum was to be administered under the hospital's half of the $7,000,000 Johns Hopkins provided to found the Johns Hopkins Institutions, according to his will, two codicils to this will, the incorporation papers filed in 1867, and the instruction letter he prepared months before his death in 1873 to give guidance to the hospital trustees he selected. The president of university board of trustees which he also selected was a member of the hospital board of trustees. This orphan asylum was thereby also called the Johns Hopkins Hospital Colored Children Orphan Asylum. The school of nursing was to be similarly administered according to the same sources. Johns Hopkins was born in Crofton in Anne Arundel County, Maryland , the second of eleven children, on a 500 acre (2 km2) tobacc] plantation. When his Quaker parents freed their slaves in 1807, Johns and his brother were put to work in the fields, interrupting their formal education. Johns worked for a time in his uncle's wholesale grocery business, where he fell in love with his cousin Mary. Mary's parents would not allow them to marry, since prejudice against first cousins marrying was strong among Quakers. They agreed never to marry. 's Great Americans Series ]] Hopkins and Jonathan Moore, also a Quaker, went into business together. The business later became Hopkins & Brothers after Moore dissolved the partnership claiming that Johns loved money too much. Hopkins then partnered with his three brothers; Hopkins & Brothers sold various wares in the Shenandoah Valley from wagons in exchange for corn whiskey which was then sold in Baltimore as "Hopkins' Best". Later Hopkins invested heavily in the Baltimore And Ohio Railroad , where he made most of his fortune. He twice put up his own money to bail out the railroad in 1857 and 1873. When Hopkins died without heirs in 1873, he left $7 million (mostly in B&O stock) to found the world-famous Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland , as was indicated in 1867 when the incorporation papers for the first of the Johns Hopkins Institutions were filed and in his 1873 letter to the hospital trustees and his will. At the time his bequest was the single largest philanthropic donation ever made. Hopkins's first name, often misstated as "John", comes from the surname of one of his ancestors. His great-grandmother, Margaret Johns, married Gerard Hopkins, one of their children was named Johns Hopkins, and that name was passed on to his grandson. |
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