HOPKINS, Moses Aaron, clergyman, born in Montgomery county, Virginia, 25 December, 1846; died in Monrovia, Liberia, 3 August, 1886. He was of African descent, and born in slavery, but, escaped during the civil war and became a cook in the Federal army, and afterward on Mississippi steamboats and at Pittsburg, Pennsylvania He began to learn the alphabet when nearly twenty years old, studied at Avery college, Alleghany City, Pennsylvania. and at Lincoln university, where he was graduated in 1874. and then studied theology at Auburn seminary, New York, of which he was the first colored graduate. After receiving ordination as an evangelist at Baltimore in 1877, he was settled as a pastor in Franklinton, North Carolina, and acquired a wide influence over the people of his race as a minister and educator. He took an independent position on political questions, and in 1885 was appointed United States minister resident and consul-general to Liberia.