Elisha G. Hopkins' lot: 1844
.G. Hopkins and his family owned and occupied this double lot so long that the short little street up its middle was named after them. There was at least one dwelling to which this lane provided access in the 1930s, and possibly even later.
This is one of the few plots in Penn Yan that were created not by Abraham Wagener and then subdivided by his grantee. Hopkins bought the northerly half from Wagener in 1827, the last vacant lot in this block. In 1844 he bought the lot to the south and moved his residence from his old house to a new one remodeled from Abraham H. Bennett's print shop. Hopkins then proceeded to expand his woodworking business into quite a large enterprise that culminated in the 1890s with the boom in wooden fruit baskets. One of the old man's sidelines (as was the case with nearly all furniture makers) was the making of coffins. One of his sons continued this business and was not only a successful undertaker but the proprietor of the coffin factory on the premises.
The entire double lot remained in the ownership of the Hopkins family until it was split in 1905 to accomodate the new Carnegie library for the village. Elisha's old house on the other part of the lot had already been removed and a new one built for his son at the end of the 19th century, that still stands today.
The creation of this lot wasn't so much a matter of Wagener selling a large lot to an individual who then subdivided it, as of Hopkins buying two adjacent lots and putting them together for his own interests.
Elisha G. Hopkins bought a single lot from Wagener in 1827, and then added
another adjacent lot to it in 1844 so he could run his and his sons' woodworking
business on the site.
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