Hopson, Ernest George

HOPSON, Ernest George (1868-1932), the yournger brother of Charles H. Hopson, was born in Reading, England in October 1868. He was active in Halifax, N.S. and may have been an engineer by training. He was employed by the Massachusetts Metropolitan Water and Sewerage Board to oversee the construction of the waterworks system in Clinton, Mass. in 1896-97 (Sydney Record, 23 April 1901, 5; Morning Chronicle [Halifax], 2 Jan. 1902, 4). He worked as a clerk in the Halifax office of Elliot & Hopson in 1898 and then joined the Massachusetts Artillery and served as a volunteer in Cuba during the Spanish-American War in 1898 (Atlantic Weekly [Dartmouth], 15 Oct. 1898, 3). Hopson moved to Sydney, N.S. in April 1901 and formed a partnership with his older brother (see list of works in entry under Charles H. Hopson; inf. from Sydney Record, 2 July 1901, 3). In late 1902 Richard A. Johnson joined the partnership and by June of 1903 the firm of Hopson Brothers had been dissolved, and were succeeded by Whitten & Johnson. Both of the Hopson brothers left Canada in 1904. In 1908 however, a person with the identical name of Ernest G. Hopson was recorded in Portland, Oregon, where he was listed as Assistant Supervising Engineer with the U.S. Reclamation Service. He continued to live and work there as a civil engineer in that city until after 1930, and later died in Portland, Ore. on 4 July 1932.