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Johns Hopkins (May 19, 1795, Anne Arundel County, Maryland – December 24, 1873, Baltimore) was a wealthy entrepreneur, philanthropist, and abolitionist of 19th century Baltimore, now most noted for his philanthropic creation of the institutions that bear his name, namely the Johns Hopkins University, Johns Hopkins Hospital and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Birthplace, family and name

On May 19, 1795, Johns Hopkins was born on Whitehall, a 500-acre (two km²) tobacco plantation with approximately 500 slaves located in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. Johns Hopkins, who was nicknamed "Johnsie",¹ was the second son and the second child of the eleven children born to Samuel and Hannah Janney Hopkins. He spent his childhood on the Whitehall plantation where his parents settled after their marriage in a Quaker ceremony in Virginia on August 19, 1792. Johns Hopkins' Maryland-born father, Samuel Hopkins, born in 1759, was thirty-three and his mother, Virginia born, Hannah Janney, born in 1774, was eighteen. His birthplace is now located close to the intersection of Reidel Road and Johns Hopkins Road in Crofton, Maryland.

Gerrard Hopkins was the first member of the paternal side of Johns Hopkins' family to settle in America. He emigrated from Canterbury, England and settled in Anne Arundel County, Maryland in the 1660s, approximately one hundred thirty five years before Johns Hopkins' birth. "The Hopkins family was in the Crofton area for 270 years and accumulated more than 1000 acres (4 km²) of land", according to a Crofton, Maryland online site. Whitehall, Johns Hopkins' birthplace was purchased by the Gerrard Hopkins who was the son and namesake of the first settler on Johns Hopkin's father's side of the family. The second Gerrard Hopkins also converted to the Quaker faith from the Church of England to which his father belonged. This Gerrard Hopkins was in addition the father of the first child named "Johns Hopkins" in the family.

Johns Hopkins' first name "Johns" was an unusual first name, but not for children in the Hopkins' family descended from Gerrard Hopkins. A tradition of giving sons the first name "Johns" seemed to have started when the second Gerrard Hopkins and his wife Margaret Johns gave their tenth and last child his mother's surname, "Johns" as his first name. ² The first name "Johns" was next given to oldest son of the first "Johns Hopkins". Philip and Samuel Hopkins, the second and first sons of the first Johns Hopkins and his third wife, Elizabeth Thomas gave the name "Johns Hopkins" to their first and second sons, respectively. ³ The practice of using the mother's surname in the names of children seemed not to have been uncommon and Johns Hopkins' siblings also have their mother's surname "Janney" as part of their names.

On the maternal side of the family, Johns Hopkins was descended from Thomas Janney, who was born in Cheshire, England, in 1634, and who came to America with his wife Margery Heath and children aboard the Endeavour in 1683. A Quaker minister who had experienced persecution in England, he and his family settled in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and later migrated to Loudon county, Virginia, where Hannah Janney, Johns Hopkins' mother, was born.

Johns Hopkins' ancestors on both sides of his family arrived in America with indentured servants. Both families were farmers. Both families accumulated several parcels of land. During the second generastion the Hopkins' family also converted to the Quaker faith still adhered to by the the Janney family. During this generation the son and namesake of the first Gerrard Hopkins became a slave owner like so many other tobacco farmers in Anne Arundel County. The Janneys rarely became slave owners, and some were even outspoken opponents of slavery. Finally, although the first Johns Hopkins had freed his slaves in 1778, his son Samuel Hopkins became a slave owner, and for nearly the first fifteen years of Samuel and Hannah Hopkins' marriage, and for the first twelve years of their second son's, Johns Hopkins, life, Johns Hopkins' parents were Quakers and slave owners.

The emancipation and its aftermath

In 1807⁴ Johns Hopkins' parents freed their slaves. The family emancipated their able-bodied slaves, without any request for compensation, and took on the responsibility of caring for the less able-bodied slaves. As members of the local Quaker society, his parents had been among those who decided to emancipate their slaves, and who made emancipation a requirement for all members in their local Quaker society who wanted to retain their membership. Because of this emancipation, the formal education of Johns, then 12, and his older brother, Joseph, then 14, was interrupted. Since the family had freed the slaves and often could not afford hired labor, most of the work including work in the field, child care and other domestic work on the farm was done by the family members, the less able-bodied slaves including the elderly who could work and who had remained on the farm after the 1807 emancipation. Johns Hopkins' principal responsibilities included both field work and help with ten younger children in the family.

His father, Samuel Hopkins, died in 1814. Johns Hopkins' and his older brother's responsibilities. included care and assistance to his mother who died in 1846. About a year before his mother's death, Johns Hopkins' older brother Joseph Hopkins also died. Johns Hopkins, who lived longer than his other brothers as well, and who was the most successful of his siblings, continued to support and provide asistance to Joseph's family, and to his other siblings and their families even after his death in his last will and testament. Similar to his parents Johns Hopkins continued to his care for the elderly and less able-bodied, including slaves and servants, his siblings and their families, his mother. According to most sources, from this 1807 emancipation,and whether he was working on the farm or later in his business careers, Johns Hopkins was known as a hard working and frugal man, The story of the family's struggles and their life before and after the 1807 emancipation was told by a relative, Mrs.Helen Hopkins Thom, in the first and only biography of Johns Hopkins, Johns Hopkins: A Silhouette.

Business years

After he left the plantation, Hopkins worked for a time in his uncle's wholesale grocery business. His first experiences and successes in business came while his uncle was away during the War of 1812 according to most sources. While staying at his uncle's home, he fell in love with his cousin, Elizabeth Hopkins. A Quaker prejudice against the marriage of first cousins existed and Elizabeth's parents would not allow them to marry.¹ They pledged never to marry anyone else and remained single for the rest of their lives. Still, just as Johns Hopkins provided for his extended family, he provided a home for her in his will. She lived there until her death in 1889, almost fifteen years after his death in 1873.

After he left his uncle's store, Hopkins and Benjamin Moore, also a Quaker, went into business together. The business partnership was later dissolved as Moore claimed that Johns loved money more than he did,¹ or so it is often reported. The story that Johns Hopkins was "the only man more interested in making money than I" was widely, and some feel inaccurately, reported, and according to Field in 1995 these words were attributed not just to Moore, but to various other business associates of Johns Hopkins.

After Moore's withdrawal, Hopkins partnered with three of his brothers and established Hopkins & Brothers. The company prospered by selling various wares in the Shenandoah Valley from Conestoga wagons, sometimes in exchange for corn whiskey, which was then sold in Baltimore as "Hopkins' Best." Hopkins invested heavily in the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and he later became a banker and a ship owner. He put up his own money more than once to save Baltimore City during financial crises. At least twice in 1857 and 1873 he bailed the railroad out of debt. ⁵ During the American Civil War, Hopkins was a strong supporter of the war despite the fact that he was a Quaker, and of the Union unlike many other Marylanders. Many of Maryland's and Baltimore's leading citizens and businesspersons according to Thom and others sympathized with and often supported the South and/or the Confederacy.⁶ This businessman was a Union man and friend of Lincoln although he lived in a state whose citizens had not voted for Lincoln as the US President and where famous native sons of Maryland like Supreme Court Justice Taney of the Dred Scott case continually opposed Lincoln's decisions during his presidency, among them Lincoln's policy of limiting habeas corpus and stationing troops in Maryland.

In 1862 Hopkins wrote a letter to Lincoln requesting the President to oppose those who did not want to keep troops stationed in Maryland, and instead keep the commanded by General John Ellis Wool stationed in Maryland. ⁷ As the railroad's financial director, he and the railroad presidentJohn Work Garrett were largely responsible for the use of the railroad to support the Union cause. One of the first campaigns of the Civil War was planned at Johns Hopkins' summer estate, Clifton, and it became a frequent meeting place for local Union sympathizers, and federal officials. He used his wealth and the B & O railroad to take troops to the front, Johns Hopkins supplied horsehoes ⁸ and other supplies to the Union Army. After the Civil War during Reconstruction, Johns Hopkins was a railroad man, a banker, a ship owner, the owner of various other businesses, and an abolitionist according to Thom. His business ventures yielded enormous wealth, and Johns Hopkins is listed as the 69th out of 100 wealthiest men according to The Wealthy 100: From Benjamin Franklin to Bill Gates - A Ranking of the Richest Americans, Past and Present. ⁹

His death and his philanthropy

Johns Hopkins died without heirs on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1873. He left $7 million, mostly in Baltimore & Ohio Railroad stock, to establish his namesake institutions. This sum was the single largest philanthropic donation ever made to educational institutions up until that time. The bequest was used to found posthumously the Johns Hopkins Colored Children Orphan Asylum ¹⁰ first as he requested, in 1875, the Johns Hopkins University in 1876, the Johns Hopkins Press, the longest continuously operating academic press in America, in 1878, the Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing in 1889, and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1893.

The first of these posthumously founded institutions, the Johns Hopkins Colored Children Orphan Asylum (JHCCOA) aka Johns Hopkins Hospital Colored Children Orphan Asylum (JHHCCOA) ¹¹ was founded by the trustees selected by Johns Hopkins to serve on the hospital board of trustees. The trustees of the hospital board were led by a friend and fellow Quaker, businessman, philanthropist and abolitionist.Francis King. This orphan asylum was constructed by one of most famous architects of that time, John Niernsee. The construction of this asylum including its educational and living facilities were praised at the opening of this orphanage by a Baltimore American reporter who said that the orphan asylum was a place where "nothing was wanting that could benefit science and humanity". As was done in the cases of the most famous Johns Hopkins Institutions, it was also constructed after correspondences with those in charge of similar institutions, and visits to such sites in Europe and America. The Johns Hopkins (Hospital) Orphan Asylum opened with 24 boys and girls. Under Gilman and his successors, this orphanage was later changed to serve as an orphanage and training school for black female orphans principally as domestic workers, and next as an "orthopedic convalescent" home and school for "colored crippled" children and orphans. This orphan asylum was closed in 1924 nearly fifty years after it opened. It was never reopened.

The rest of the above named institutions that carried the name of "Johns Hopkins" were founded under the administration of the first president of the Johns Hopkins University, Daniel Coit Gilman who arrived in Baltimore to take up his responsibilities as president of the Johns Hopkins University in 1875. Gilman, formerly the president of the University of California, had been unanimously chosen by the university board of trustees.

The hospital and the university boards of trustees were two interlocking boards of trustees both established by Johns Hopkins. These two boards were interlocking ones in that the president of one board was a member of the other board and approximately nine members of the trustees on one board were also members of the second board. Some of these trustees were also the executors of his will. Johns Hopkins' views on his bequests, and on the duties and responsibilities of these trustees in implementing his wishes, are formally stated primarily in four documents, the incorporation papers filed in 1867, his instruction letter to the hospital trustees dated March 12, 1873, his will, which was quoted from extensively in the Baltimore Sun's obituary, ¹² and in his will's two codicils, one dated 1870 and the other dated 1873. ¹³. His obituary appeared first not in the Baltimore Sun cited online on the Johns Hopkins' University's website but in another local newspaper, the Baltimore American. Other obituaries appeared in the New York and Chicago newspapers. Journalists published his March 1873 instruction letter in its entirety, in Baltimore and New York. Before then, various publications including Thom's and Scharf's also did so. Commendations for his philanthropy included newspaper and magazine articles and a resolution from the Baltimore City that followed the March 1873 instruction letter.

The original site for Johns Hopkins University was chosen personally by Hopkins. It was to be located at his summer estate, Clifton. This property, which is now owned by the city of Baltimore, is the site of a golf course and a park named "Clifton Park." This site was referred to in his will. A decision was made not to found the university at Clifton. Some other decisions diverged from those formally stated in the four documents cited above, many of them centered on the issues of race, gender, class, religion, and age.

Both the nursing school and the hospital were founded almost sixteen years after Johns Hopkins' death, and over a decade after the founding of the university and orphan asylum in 1876 and 1875 respectively. In his March 1873 instruction letter it was formally stated that the hospital would provide assistance to the poor of "all races', and no matter the indigent patient's "age", their sex, second, and their "color" third; that wealthier patients should pay for services and thereby subsidize the care provided to the indigent; that the hospital would be the administrative unit for the orphan asylum for African American children, which was to receive $25000 annual support out of the hospital's half of the endowment to the institutions that would become his namesake, and that the hospital and orphan asylum should serve 400 patients and 400 children respectively. These orphaned African American children served by this orphan asylum could either be orphaned or be in need with one parent or two parents. In the abovementioned documents scholarships were also provided for poor youths in the states where Johns Hopkins had made his wealth; assistance was also given to orphanages other than the one for African American children, to members of his family, to those he employed, black and white, the cousin he loved, and to many institutions for the care and education of youths, black and white; the ill,including the mentally ill, and convalescents.

Unsolicited assistance was provided to youths who needed help to start a career or business. One of the latter youths was one of those who asked Thom to write her biography on Johns Hopkins. "In these days of degeneracy, dishonesty, fraud, and corruption, it is refreshing to read the record of the life of Johns Hopkins, who died in Baltimore last week" is the beginning sentence of the Chicago Tribune's obituary of December 28, 1873 titled "A NATIONAL BENEFACTOR".

Two of the institutions he endowed and mentioned in the documents named above have since closed, the orphan asylum that closed permanently in the 1920s after World War I after alkmost fifty years of existence, and the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing was closed in 1973, and reopened in 1983. A history of the nursing school and its struggles can be found on the university's website. ¹⁴ Johns Hopkins' wish for a training school for female nurses was formally stated in the March 12, 1873 letter. As he wished, the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, and the Johns Hopkins Hospital, were founded in 1889, both by the hospital trustees led by Francis King, who had consulted with Florence Nightingale during a visit to England.

Finally, his memory immediately after his death appeared to have been a decisive factor in opening the doors both of Johns Hopkins University to its first African American student, and its first African American graduate student, Kelly Miller, and of Maryland's Medical and Chirurgical Society Med-Chi to this society's first three African American members. Harvard trained physician Whitfield Winsey was the first African American member of this organization and of another local medical society that later merged with it. ¹⁵. These physicians could attend meetings because meetings were held on Johns Hopkins' campus. But as his memory waned and trustees like King died, the institutions he endowed became more like the other institutions in the city where he made his wealth. On March 15, 1892, it is stated in the Johns Hopkins University chronology that an administrator hired by Gilman recommended that the hospital should have a "separate ward for colored patients". ¹⁶ Johns Hopkins Hospital subsequently became a segregated facility. Yet, Johns Hopkins' separate but equal stance was still evident when it came to these segregated wards: "Special care will be taken to see that the heating and ventilation apparatus is as perfect as possible. A sun balcony will be erected on each floor on the east side, for convalescents, while a sun bay-window will be constructed at the south end of the south wing. On each floor there will be a dining room, kitchen, lavatory and bath-rooms. . . . The building will be fireproof throughout." ¹⁷ As segregation began to be increasingly reflected within the Johns Hopkins institutions, it affected pay, hiring and promotions and until today patients in these segregated wards and those employed in the lower rungs of the service industries have the longest and most continuous history within the Johns Hopkins Institutions. Johns Hopkins' students, physicians, administrators and staff of African descent have a much shorter history within these institutions, and most are still living today, including the first African undergraduate, Frederick Scott and one of the two first graduates of the medical school. The first instructor, laboratory supervisor was the late Vivien Thomas who also invented and developed research instruments, served as an assistant in surgery to surgeon Hugh Blalock, and worked closely with Blalock and Helen Taussig in developing and conducting the first successful blue baby operation. The doors of the Johns Hopkins Institutions, and of Maryland's state medical societies were largely closed to students and professionals of African descent until after the 1940s, and more so, the 1960s and 1970s.

Johns Hopkins' abolitionism

Johns Hopkins was represented as an abolitionist during three periods in his life in Johns Hopkins: A Silhouette, a pre- Civil War period, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. After the 1970s, a few other sources ¹⁸ represent him as an abolitionist. And although Thom's biography of Johns Hopkins was published by the Johns Hopkins Press few publications after Thom or these post 1960s publications refer to him as an abolitionist. ¹⁹.

Pre-Civil War and Civil War Abolitionist

To commemorate the centennial anniversary of Johns Hopkins' death, Kathryn Jacob, a former archivist at Johns Hopkins University's library published in 1974 almost fifty years' after Thom's 1929 publication the article "Mr. Johns Hopkins" in an alumni publication, the Johns Hopkins Magazine where she discussed the 1807 emancipation, called Johns Hopkins a unionist and an abolitionist, and gave examples of Johns Hopkins' use of the railroad to support the Union cause. In 1995 almost two decades later Mike Field stated that Johns Hopkins was an abolitionist before the word "abolitionist" was "invented" Field's article was published in the Johns Hopkins Gazette to commemorate the bicentennial anniversary of Johns Hopkins' birth in 1795. All three, Field, Jacob, and Thom portrayed Johns Hopkins as a child or twelve year old participant in what Thom referred to as his parents' "abolition" of the family's slaves in 1807.¹. Jacob's article titled "Mr. Johns Hopkins" has been cited as the best brief biography of Johns Hopkins. ²⁰

Before the Civil War Johns Hopkins worked closely with two of America's most famous abolitionists, Myrtilla Miner²¹ and Henry Ward Beecher²². During the Civil War Johns Hopkins was a supporter of Abraham Lincoln²³ as shown again in the 1862 letter Johns Hopkins wrote where he asked Lincoln not to support the many Marylanders who were demanding the removal of Union troops from Maryland. He requested Lincoln to keep General John Wool and the Union troops stationed under him in Maryland instead in this letter he signed "your servant" and "friend" . ²⁴

Post-War or Reconstruction Abolitionist

After the Civil War and during Reconstruction, Thom represented Johns Hopkins as a banker, a railroad man, and an abolitionist who infuriated many of the leading citizens and business persons in Baltimore when he demonstrated his abolitionism. Baltimore Sun articles which can be found online in the Maryland Archives, and William Starr Myer's book on "self-reconstruction" in Maryland²⁵, also online, provide some support for Thom's characterization of him as an abolitionist in post Civil War Maryland. Another source is the content of the four documents mentioned above and his philanthropy during his later years which expressed his continued opposition to the racial practices that were beginning to emerge or re-emerge during the American Reconstruction period,²⁶ and later even in the posthumously constructed and founded institutions that would carry his name.²⁷ Finally, local newspapers and magazines in the post Civil War Reconstruction period also seemed to confirm Thom's representation of Johns Hopkins and his interactions with other Marylanders. On the one side a Baltimore American journalist praised Johns Hopkins for founding three institutions, a university, a hospital and an orphan asylum for colored children. To this Baltimore American journalist Johns Hopkins was a "man who knows no race"; Johns Hopkins was "beyond" his times citing his provisions for blacks and whites in the hospital. This Baltimore American reporter also pointed to similarities between Benjamin Franklin's and Johns Hopkins' views on hospital care and construction, such as their shared interest in free hospitals, the availability of emergency services, and the hospital's location in urban area. His article followed the only meeting of a board of trustees before Johns Hopkins' death in 1873, the June 1870 meeting of the university board of trustees in June 1870. This article was part of the obituary of Johns Hopkins in the Baltimore American newspaper where the first Johns Hopkins' abolition of his slaves in 1788 was also cited.

On the other side were the Baltimore Sun journalists who covered Johns Hopkins and the others who filed an injunction to "block" the holding of the Constitutional convention in Maryland where the present constitution of Maryland was framed. The Maryland Constitution had been previously framed by Marylanders who were unionists, radical republicans and their allies. At their 1864 Constitutional Convention they ended slavery in Maryland, required oaths for those who sided with the Confederacy and provided state support for African American education. These republicans and their Unionists however gave the vote only to all white males. The Baltimore Sun articles on Johns Hopkins, this injunction, and the response to it were more favorable to those in the Democratic Party than they were towards Johns Hopkins and the others who filed this injunction.

The year 1867 is best known as the year Johns Hopkins incorporated the first Johns Hopkins Institutions. But this year was also the year this injunction was filed, the sixtieth anniversary of his family's emancipation of their slaves without any request for compensation; the year that the Constitutional Convention that this injunction failed to block was convened, and that the Democrats and conservatives passed the 1867 Constitution at this Convention. where it was stated that ex-owners of slaves should be compensated, and that removed both the requirement of an oath and the state support of education for African American schools. Records of slave owners who tried to obtain compensation for their former slaves in 1867 can be found online. In the next years the citizens of Maryland did not pass the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments.

These sources provide some support of Thom's representation of Johns Hopkins as a Reconstruction actor whose abolitionist stance angered the leading citizens of Baltimore especially if they were supporters of slavery, secession, the South or the Confederacy, and as a person who experienced "hostility" that had begun with his family's 1807 "abolition" of their slaves in a tobacco growing county dependent on slave labor since slavery had become legal in the 1660s, and that persisted after he became a banker, philanthropist, and railroad man who often did not subscribe to many of the racial and class prejudices of his time. His critics she wrote were more open with their negative portrayals of him after his death, or when his death she said made it impossible for him to continue to successfully defend himself. Even the trustees he selected often took positions opposed or different from the ones he formally stated after his death.

In her biography of Johns Hopkins, Thom cited the 1887 memoir by Baltimore's mayor, ex-major, judge, and trustee on the university board of trustees, who stated that Johns Hopkins was a "wealthy Union man", and a member of a committee of bankers who gave $500,000 to the city of Baltimore after the first blood in the Civil War was shed in Baltimore city. Thom interestingly seemed not to notice the statement by George William Brown in his memoir when said he disliked abolitionists. He was a friend to Taney, and his sympathies with the Confederacy and the South led to his imprisonment during the Civil War. Another trustee and lawyer Reverdy Johnson, Jr. was the namesake of his father who had been a lawyer for Dred Scott's opponent during the Dred Scott case,and he was a supporter of many of his father's views on race. Johnson later became the head of the executive committee of the university board of trustees. Both Johnson and Brown had been Union men during the Civil War and then worked closely with Gilman immediately before, during and after the founding of the Johns Hopkins University. They both were two of the individuals that Johns Hopkins did not put on both boards of trustees. Both friends of Supreme Court Justice Taney trustee Reverdy Johnson Jr. resigned after there was a vote in favor of coeducation.

Thom was a family member and biographer whose definition of the word "abolitionist" differed in many ways from the definition of the word "abolitionist" by popular and academic writers until recently. At the Johns Hopkins Institutions, and in academia in general, there has been a long-standing convention which only now seems to be ending. The word "abolitionist" coined in 1836 according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), was long used as a label only to refer to 1830s abolitionists, and their methods and activities. Recently a 2001 publication was praised by reviewers for being one of the first publications on pre-1830s abolitionists, and on their organizations, methods, and activities. In light of this publication, Johns Hopkins appears to be more like the pre-1830s abolitionists than the 1830s abolitionists. Pre-1830s abolitionists were elite white males who used the legal system, the legislatures, petitions, and their wealth to end slavery or to provide education and social services to those of African descent.

These differing ways of defining abolitionists may in part account for writers on Johns Hopkins and on the institutions that carry his name rare use the label of "abolitionist" for Johns Hopkins. He is not presented as a Reconstruction actor and the first and the best known of the Johns Hopkins' institutions are almost never reported, as institutions that were all posthumously constructed and founded during Reconstruction. The second major history of Johns Hopkins University Institutions during this period was by an alumnus, Hugh Hawkins, who reviewed local newspapers written during this period. Although he used the conventional definition of abolition in his studies, he presents the various Reconstruction actors as individuals who were competing over the definitions of science, research, medicine, public health, doctoral education, medical education, and education in general; of freedom, citizenship and equality, as well as over what kinds or quality of services and institutions should be provided for the poor, the aged, women, African Americans, and immigrants. And, the first history of the Johns Hopkins' institutions begins with the author, an alumnus of Johns Hopkins, asking why the Johns Hopkins Institutions are dated from 1876 when Gilman was inaugurated, and not from the oldest documents that can be found like most other educational institutions.

Recently, in addition to the redefinition of abolitionist currently occurring, there are papers in the 1990s and the 2000s that provide some support for Thom's and Johns Hopkins' contemporaries' representations of Johns Hopkins and his accomplishments. In articles yet unpublished, Dr. Reynolds is one of the few writers who states that Johns Hopkins' "dream" of a colored children orphan asylum was formally stated in the papers incorporating the Johns Hopkins Institutions. She also discusses its existence at first as a "model institution" and then she presents the changes that occurred during its nearly fifty years existence before it was completely closed in 1924. Here she is unlike Thom who like so many others principally stated that his wish for this orphan asylum appeared in Johns Hopkins "long and painstaking will." Nor did Thom like most others did not mention like Reynolds that the colored orphan asylum was actually opened on Biddle Street in 1885, and therefore that it was closed in the 1920s. Thom did include Johns Hopkins' March 12, 1873 instruction letter to the hospital trustees at the end of her biography on him wherein he formally stated his bequests to the hospital, orphan asylum, nursing school, and some say, a medical school.

The legacy of Johns Hopkins

The Johns Hopkins University, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Johns Hopkins Schools of Nursing, Medicine, and Public Health, and the other institutions that carry his name are some of the most renowned institutions in the nation, and the world. These institution are renowned for world class services in the areas of research, the sciences, medicine, public health, the arts and humanities and education, particularly medical education. The Johns Hopkins Press founded in 1898, is the longest continuously operating academic press in the nation. Johns Hopkins lived under the first eighteen presidents in America. He was born in the second term of the America's Revolutionary hero and first president, George Washington (Jacob) and died during the second term of Civil War hero and America's eighteenth president Ulysses Grant, Johns Hopkins' legacy largely derives from the founding of the institutions which are his "namesakes and beneficiaries", which derives from his accomplishments as a businessman, and philanthropist. His legacy derives less from his opposition to slavery and to the separate but equal beliefs sanctioned by the Supreme Court because this part of his legacy has been largely forgotten and unrecorded. While he is well known as the founder of the world class institutions that carry his name he is not known for founding another model institution, the Johns Hopkins Colored Children Orphan Asylum, aka the Johns Hopkins (Hospital)Colored Children Orphan Asylum. It is still less reported that he was born a son of a Quaker slaveowners who later became a child participant in an emancipator, an abolitionist, a Union man,and a friend and supporter of Lincoln, the Union and radical republicans. Cited more is the role he played in saving the city of Baltimore and the B&O railroad after financial crises, and less so as a businessman who may have used his earlier war time experiences first during and after the War of 1812 and later the Civil War to save and rebuild Baltimore city's economy after the Civil War, as Thom suggested. Johns Hopkins has been represented Johns Hopkins as illiterate, and as a self-made man. Thom felt that those who represented him so ignored in the first instance the support he received from his own family in Maryland and Virginia, from his uncle whose store he worked in and other Quakers, and in the second instance the literacy of his mother. and his, hers' and other efforts undertaken to continue his education after the end of his family's involvement in slavery and of Johns Hopkins' and his elder brothers' formal education. Thom wrote about a love of learning that she felt Johns Hopkins inherited from his mother and that persisted throughout his life.

Johns Hopkins' Quaker faith and his early life experiences seemed to be reflected throughout his life whether he was a businessman, railroad man, banker, investor, ship owner,²⁸, philanthropist, or founder of the schools that he endowed and that carry his name. "From the early days of his career, Johns Hopkins had looked upon his wealth as a trust to benefit future generations. He is said to have told his gardener that, "like the man in the parable, I have had many talents given to me and I feel they are in trust. I shall not bury them but give them to the lads who long for a wider education." His philosophy quietly anticipated Andrew Carnegie's much publicized "Gospel of Wealth" by more than 25 years", or so said Jacob in "Mr. Johns Hopkins" ²⁹ It was also a philanthropy and banking and other business practices that were not founded on slavery, and later on many of the separate but unequal practices increasing during the post Civil War years of his life.

In 1973 Johns Hopkins was cited in The Americans: The Democratic Experience by Daniel Boorstin the head of the Library of Congress. From November 14, 1975 to September 6, 1976 his portrait was displayed in the Smithsonian National Gallery’s exhibit on the democratization of America based on Boorstin's Pulitzer prize winning book “Portraits From The Americans: The Democratic Experience". In 1989, the United States Postal Service issued a $1 postage stamp in his honor, as part of the Great Americans series.³⁰ In December 2006 Ross Jones, an alumnus and a retired assistant to six presidents and board of trustees of the Johns Hopkins University who like most others does not refer to Johns Hopkins the abolitionist, says about Johns Hopkins' legacy that "Without Johns Hopkins, I don't think the city of Baltimore or the state or the world would be what it is”.

References

External links

• Genealogical Records on Marylanders
• Thom and Jacob discuss his love for his cousin and Quaker traditions
• In his 1887 memoir, Baltimore and the Nineteenth of April, 1861: A Study of the War, George William Brown city Johns Hopkins as a wealthy Union man in Baltimore, a city with strong Confederate and Southern leanings
• In The Chronicles of Baltimore: Being a Complete History of "Baltimore Town" and Baltimore City from the Earliest Period to the Present Time published in 1874, John Thomas Scharf cited the 1873 instruction letter to the hospital trustees and a city council resolution thanking Johns Hopkins for his philanthropy. Thom's biography and New York and Maryland newspapers were sources that published parts or all of this letter
• The Institutional Records of The Johns Hopkins Hospital Colored Orphan Asylum
• Abstract Johns Hopkins Dream for a Model of its Kind: The JHH Colored Orphans Asylum", 2000 Conference International Society for the History of Medicine BY Dr. P. Reynolds
• Grave site of Johns Hopkins
• Graveside ceremony for Johns Hopkins
• Baltimore and the Nineteenth of April, 1861: A Study of the War, the memoir of George William Brown then the mayor of Baltimore city, later a member of the university board of trustees of the Johns Hopkins University
• The Chronicles of Baltimore: Being a Complete History of "Baltimore Town" and Baltimore City from the Earliest Period to the Present Time published in 1874 by John Thomas Scharf
• "If He Could See Us Now: Mr. Johns Hopkins' Legacy Strong University, Hospital Benefactor Turned 200 on May 19, 1995", Mike Field, the author, contradicts this statement
• Chronology, Nursing school
• The Institutional Records of The Johns Hopkins Hospital Colored Orphan
• Abstract Johns Hopkins Dream for a Model of its Kind: The JHH Colored Orphans Asylum" By Dr. P. Reynolds
• "If He Could See Us Now: Mr. Johns Hopkins' Legacy Strong University, Hospital Benefactor Turned 200 on May 19, 1995" by Mike Field a writer for the Johns Hopkins Gazette. Field, Thom, and Jacob called Johns Hopkins an abolitionist. See also The Racial Record of Johns Hopkins University in the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, No. 25, Autumn, 1999, pp. 42-43/ JSTOR
• Johns Hopkins, Maryland State Archives
• "The History of African Americans @ Johns Hopkins University" See in particular the chronology and the paper by Danton Rodriguez.