Jacob Hopp

Early printer and newspaper owner in De Smet.

J.W. Hopp is about building a house of grout. What does a bachelor want of a house? – De Smet Leader, March 10, 1883.

     
Jacob Willson Hopp was born in Clayton County, Iowa, on January 13, 1858, the son of John and Sara Hopp. Jake Hopp was the middle of five brothers, all of whom apprenticed as printers. In 1879, Jake’s brother George followed the railroad to the town of Fountain, Dakota Territory, where he began publication of the Brookings Press. The railroad ended up not going through Fountain, so George moved his paper to Brookings as soon as it was laid out. Jake settled in De Smet (Kingsbury County) Dakota Territory in 1880 and set up shop as a printer. Brother Henry filed on a claim near De Smet and later worked on a Huron paper, and brother Thomas lived at Lake Preston and worked on the Lake Preston Times.

It’s an oft-told story that upon arrival in De Smet in early 1880, Jake Hopp set up his printing press in the back of Fuller’s Hardware, and that poor Jake slept on boards laid across the rafters while getting those first issues issued that April. What isn’t part of the Kingsbury County News origin story is that Jake contracted to purchase Lot 18, Block 3, and that he and his partner at the time, Brookings attorney George Mathews (1852-1941), were also busy working on the new abode of the Kingsbury County News in the snowy days that led up to the October blizzard of 1880. “They kept going until the 17th. By the 16th they had almost as much snow inside the new building as there was outside,” according to the Honorable Mr. Mathews when asked about it in 1918.

Jake paid 1881 and 1882 taxes on Lot 18, Block 3 – and after the Hard Winter, he ran the paper out of this building until he sold it to Dr. E. Gomer Davis in August 1883. Hopp bought Lot 13, Block 4 across Calumet to the east where, he built a two story grout building. A thin mortar was poured into cribbing made of strips of wood held in place by straps. When it hardened, the “grout” was plastered over, inside and out. The first floor of the new building was used by the printing office and the upper story was a hall where the Masons, Odd Fellows, and Workmen lodges met; it was also where Company E, Dakota Guard was organized. Grout construction didn’t prove satisfactory and it soon started to crack and fail. The grout building was condemned and torn down in February 1889, the printing office having moved to a building next door to the south a couple of years earlier. When the De Smet Leader and the Kingsbury County News were consolidated in 1891, they operated out of the Lot 12, Block 4 building, and it’s been the location of a De Smet newspaper ever since, now the home of the Kingsbury Journal. Carrie Ingalls was photographed in front of the Lot 12 building in 1892.

Laura Ingalls Wilder first mentions Mr. Hopp in Little Town on the Prairie, Chapter 16, “Name Cards,” writing that Laura accompanies Minnie Johnson to the printing office to pick out personalized name (calling) cards. Later, Laura purchases her own name cards from Mr. Hopp as well. Although Hopp and Mathews started the first newspaper in De Smet, Mathews soon went back to lawyering and Charles B. MacDonald stepped in; the two published until the summer of 1884. Following the sale of his interest in the newspaper, Jake entered into the furniture business with Charles Tinkham. Two years later, Jake bought back the newspaper and returned to the world of journalism.

We don’t know exactly when Laura Ingalls purchased her name cards from Mr. Hopp at the News; Little Town on the Prairie implies that it was after sister Mary started school in Vinton – so after November 1881. If they were purchased at any time from after the Hard Winter until the summer of 1883, they would have been purchased in the Block 3, Lot 18 location. If Laura bought them in the months prior to teaching the Bouchie school, they would have been purchased at the Block 4, Lot 13 location. The photos below show the two buildings used by the Kingsbury County News during the Little House years through These Happy Golden Years. The photo at left also identifies the Fuller building where the News was published during the Hard Winter of 1880-1881.

The Dr. Davies building is now the home of De Smet Flowers & Gifts. Just remember that it was once the Kingsbury County News print shop, and that it had been built by Jake Hopp and the future ten-term mayor of Brookings and delegate to the 51st Congress of the United States from Dakota Territory, the Honorable George A. Mathews (1852-1941).

June 11, 1883, Jake Hopp married Susie Power, older sister of Little House character Mary Power. Two years earlier, Jake and Susie had filed on adjoining claims southwest of De Smet; a portion of Jake’s preemption claim on the NW 4-110-56 is where the De Smet Cemetery is located, and Susie’s homestead claim was the SW Section 5. Their marriage announcement in the De Smet News read:

Jake has done it now. We mean Jake Hopp, our brother of the News. No longer can we condole with each other upon the hard fate that kept us in dreary loneliness, for he has escaped and we are left. On Thursday last he departed this life and entered the state of matrimony, in company with Miss Susie Power, of De Smet. The event occurred at Kasson, Minn. Goodbye Jake. May your shadow never grow less.

Around 1890, Jake and Susie Hopp moved to Genesee (Latah County) Idaho, where Jake and his brother-in-law Charley Power published the Genesee News and ran a printing office. When Jake left the newspaper business for good in January 1902, this letter ran in the Genesee News:

In the early 1900s, Jake and Susie moved to Sumas, Washington, then to Bellingham (Whatcom County) Washington; they were later joined there by Mary and Edwin Sanford. For many years, the Sanford and Hopp families lived next door to each other on Chestnut Street. In Bellingham, Jake was very active in local politics although he never held public office. He ran a company which manufactured concrete pipe used in construction.

Susie Hopp died in July 1907; she and Jake had no children. In 1910, Jake married Alice Leitch. On a 1926 car trip to California, Jake became ill and died unexpectedly. Jake and Susie Hopp are buried in Bayview Cemetery in Bellingham. Alice Hopp died in 1932; her body was sent to her former home in Illinois for burial.

     

Jake Hopp (LTP 16), see also name cards, Dr. E. Gomer Davies