Background
Edward Augustus Hopkins was born on November 29, 1822 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. He was the son of Melusina (Muller) and The Right Reverend John Henry Hopkins.
Edward Augustus Hopkins was born on November 29, 1822 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. He was the son of Melusina (Muller) and The Right Reverend John Henry Hopkins.
Hopkins was educated at his father's school in Burlington, Vermont.
Hopkins became midshipman in the navy from 1840 to 1845, when he resigned and accepted appointment as special agent of the United States to report on the recognition of Paraguay, but was soon recalled for exceeding his instructions by promising President Lopez recognition and mediation in the quarrel imminent between Paraguay and Buenos Aires. Supporting himself all the while by writing for such publications as the National Intelligencer and Hunt's Merchants' Magazine, he visited Paraguay twice, went to France and England to study the question of emigration, and returned to the United States late in 1851 to devote himself to promoting the United States and Paraguay Navigation Company under a charter from Rhode Island.
In 1853 he was commissioned consul to Paraguay and sailed for Asunción, where he bought a large tract of land for the company, set up a sawmill, and began to teach native workmen to cure tobacco properly and to make a good grade of cigars. Soon, however, he fell out of favor with Lopez, who quickly brought the undertaking to an end.
Hopkins continued to devote his abundant energies to promoting trade between the United States and South America and to developing modern means of communication, especially in the Argentine Confederation. He prepared a report on immigration and public lands in the Argentine and in the Memorial . .. Sobre el Mejor Modo de Abrir Relaciones Comerciales entre la República Argentina y la de Bolivia (1871) urged Argentina to adopt measures to develop the vast resources of Bolivia.
In 1864 Argentina sent him as consul general to New York in the hope of obtaining a new line of steamships between New York and the Plate River, but the United States government refused to recognize him. In 1878 in a memorial, The Extension of the Proposed U. S. and Brazil Steamship-Line, from Rio de Janeiro, to Buenos Aires, he pointed out the decline of trade between the United States and South America owing to the lack of transport facilities and urged Congress to help the situation by letting a favorable contract for carrying the mails. In 1888, on one of his trips to interest businessmen in the economic opportunities of South America, he made speeches at Chicago, Springfield, Ohio, and at New York. At the time of his death he was in Washington as secretary of the Argentine delegation to the intercontinental railroad commission.
Hopkins was a prominent diplomat and entrepreneur. He made a name for himself promoting telegraph companies, steamships, and railroads; established steam navigation on the Paran and built a steam railway between Buenos Aires and San Fernando. Throughout this time he maintained a quasi-official position within the Argentine government and was a personal friend of many highly placed Argentine politicians.
On March 24, 1858, Hopkins married at Charleston, South Carolina, Jeanne Arnaud de la Coste, who died October 9, 1883, and on April 27, 1888, in New York, he married Marie Antoinette (de la Porterie) de Renthel, Marquise de Sainte Croix Molay.
