Juliet Ann Opie Hopkins was born on May 7, 1818 in Jefferson County, Virginia, United States. the daughter of Hierome Lindsay and Margaret (Muse) Opie. She was a descendant of Thomas Opie who came to America from Bristol, England, and about 1672 Hopkins married the daughter of Reverend David Lindsay, the son of Sir Hierome Lindsay of Scotland. At that time the death of her mother made her the mistress of her father's plantations and hundreds of slaves.
Hopkins was educated by English tutors and in private schools until she was sixteen years old.
Hopkins offered her services to the state of Alabama in 1861 and was sent to Richmond, where she established a hospital. When her husband, Arthur Francis Hopkins, was appointed state agent for Alabama hospitals, she was made matron. Possessing considerable executive ability, she quickly brought these hospitals to a high state of efficiency.
Among her papers are to be found letters from soldiers in other hospitals, begging her to have them transferred to the Alabama hospitals because they had heard of the superior care afforded there. General Joseph E. Johnston is reported to have said that at Bull Run she was more useful to his army than a new brigade.
Wounded at Seven Pines while rescuing disabled soldiers from the battlefield, she was lame for the rest of her life. She passed her last years in New York, but died in Washington while she was on a visit there. She was buried at Arlington with military honors.
Hopkins is best remembered for organizing medical and supply services to assist sick and wounded Alabama soldiers. To support the Confederacy she disposed of most of her land and expended the proceeds, amounting to half a million dollars, in its behalf. Her portrait appears on the twenty-five cent and the fifty-dollar bills issued by the state of Alabama during the Civil War. In 1999 she was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame.
Hopkins was an ardent supporter of the Confederacy.
In 1837 she married Commander Alexander George Gordon of the United States Navy, who died a few years later, and in 1854 she married Judge Arthur Francis Hopkins. Later they adopted a girl named Juliet.
