Livingston Yort Hopkins was born Livingston Yourtu Hopkins on July 7, 1846 in Bellefontaine, Ohio, the thirteenth of fourteen children raised in the puritanical Methodist family of Daniel and Sarah Carter (nee) Hopkins, His father died in 1849 when he was three years old and his mother was left with the home and a small estate and nine of the children who had survived.

The 1850 Federal Census for Logan County, Lake township, Ohio lists Sara Hopkins and seven of her children; Jane age 19, Elizabeth age 17, William age 14, Sara age 10, Johnston age 6, Yourtu (presumed to be Yort) age 4 and Frank age 2.

After he reached the age of seven, he was placed in the care of an older brother and his wife who were without children.

They adopted Livingston and he was sent to a district school, where children of both sexes were educated together.

The schoolmaster, "Daddy Gudgeon", took notice of Livingston’s artistic abilities at an early age and supplied him with plenty of paper and ink for his schoolroom drawings. Unfortunately, Livingston and the school parted company for good in 1861. His brother enlisted in the army and that left him to be the breadwinner. From the age of 14 years Livingston worked at various avocations, even becoming a comic artist and taking up playing the fiddle.

When the American Civil War broke out Livingston was too young to serve in the military, though he wanted to run off and join up, as did many young men; believing it would be a grand experience lasting only a short period of time. Instead he worked at various jobs for three years until he was old enough to enlist.  His desire materialized when Company C of the 130th Ohio Volunteer Infantry was organized on Johnston’s Island, Ohio from May 13 through the 31st in 1864.

Livingston’s had an aversion to war, but he was a great admirer of President Abraham Lincoln, so when the call came for more volunteers in 1864, and his being of age, Hopkins, according to military records, enlisted as a Private in Company “C” of the 130th Regiment of Ohio Volunteer Infantry at 21 years of age on May 2, 1864; serving one-hundred days, being He was mustered in at Toledo, Ohio.  Thinking it would be a short war, the 130th Ohio was initially organized for only a one hundred day period. His unit was once known as “The Hundred Days Unit”.

It was composed of the First Regiment Ohio National Guard, from Lucas County and the Seventy-fifth Battalion Ohio National Guard, from Fulton County. The Regiment left Toledo, Ohio on May 12, 1864 to report to Brigadier-General Hill, at Sandusky; for consolidation and mustering-in.  It first moved to Johnson's Island where it was engaged in guarding Rebel prisoners, then on the 4th of June the Regiment boarded boxcars for Washington City. It remained there three days before embarked on the transport “George Weems” and was transported for operations with General Butler, known as “Butler the Beast”, at Bermuda Hundred, Virginia; after which place it was ordered to Point of Rocks.  Their time there was occupied in drilling, digging rifle-pits, and serving picket duty on the lines, until the June 21st, when it marched to Deep Bottom.  They were at Deep Bottom when the “Battle of Deep Bottom” occurred from July 26th through the 29th 1864, between Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott and Maj. Gen. Charles Field of the Confederacy. The resulting Confederate victory left some 1000 casualties on the field after a Confederate counter-attack. On August 11th 1864 they marched back to Bermuda Hundred, and proceeded on transports again to Fort Powhattan; where it was ordered to be mustered out.   The 130th Ohio Volunteer Infantry was mustered out at Toledo, Ohio on September 22, 1864, upon the expiration of its term of service. Hopkins mustered out with his Regiment.

The transport ship “George Weems” on which Hopkins and his regiment were transported from Washington City to Bermuda Hundred, was a 148 foot long, 248 ton, wooden hulled, coal fired freighter; which ended her life on the reefs of Frying Pan Shoals off Wilmington on May 20, 1909.

Livingston was more than pleased to be out of the military, which for him only lasted a few months. Livingston later himself expressed his sentiments of the Great War eloquently in an article he authored, entitled “Confessions”, that was published in the Lone Hand magazine in 1913;

“I do not exactly claim to have settled the dispute between North and South, but I am entitled to mention as a curious coincidence that the war ended a few months after my enlistment. I got a taste of active service down in Virginia, in front of Petersburg and Richmond – just enough to convince me that love of bloodshed is an acquired taste, and it takes more than four or five months to acquire a taste for the life of a private soldier. It’s a dog’s life, and I was not sorry when the time came to turn my sword into a ploughshare. It is my very proud boast that I am the only survivor of that great conflict who escaped a pension or a military title. I am not even a corporal, and when my club friends (real colonels, some of them) jocularly address me as Private Hopkins, I cannot say that I am displeased.”

Having an artistic ability in writing and sketching, after the war he went to Toledo, Ohio where some of his sketches were presented to the proprietor of the “Toledo Blade” news. As a result he was hired as an illustrator, which led to an appointment on the staff of “Scribner's Weekly Magazine”. It was during his time there that Hopkins received a few months training in drawing; his only official training. Going from there to New York, Hopkins became an illustrationist for “Puck” Magazine, later the “Judge” Magazine, the “New York Daily Graphic”, and he wrote and illustrated the book “A Comic History of United States”. He had it published in time for the 1876 Centennial Celebrations, thinking it would be a smash, but people in the United States were taking everything very seriously at that time and when the book received an unfavorable review, it became a failure.

Realizing he had a unique skill he continually improving upon it for some thirteen years, and many of his illustrations began appearing in nationally recognized journals; and he did a lot of work. His illustrations appeared in the Harpers Brothers book company in their editions of “Gulliver’s Travels”, Don Quixote”, Baron Munchausen” and even Irving’s “Knickerbockers History of New York”. Other publications included the Harper publications of the “Weekly”, the “Magazine”, the “Bazaar” and “Young People”. Hopkins was said to be a tall, courteous man with something of a Don Quixote appearance. He was a man of strong principles and with strong puritanical beliefs, but he remained a good host who liked to have friends around him. He never used models for his work, which often had to be done on the run, but did a staggering amount of it, and always with its own peculiar style of humour.

Hopkins and his illustrative work became so well known that towards the end of 1882 that Mr. W. H. Traill of Sydney, Australia called him and offered him a position on the “Bulletin of Sydney” in New South Wales, Australia, which he accepted; as a caricaturist and satirist on their news staff. The offer accepted, he arrived in Sydney on February 9, 1883. Hopkins became an exceptional illustrator and a selection of his drawings was published in 1904 under the title of “On the Hop”. He went on to do illustrations of Mark Twain, himself a veteran of the Civil War, when he made a visit to Australia in 1912. When his illustrations and writing began to drop off, Hopkins remained in the newspaper business as part owner of the “Bulletin”; still in existence today. Hopkins literally founded the school of Australian caricature that grew up with the Bulletin

The Mitchell Library in Sydney, New South Wales holds twenty-seven volumes of Livingston Hopkins work, among them a satire of Union veteran George Washington Bell; as a towering American “Uncle Sam” lecturing to the Australian man on the street. Some 19,000 of Hopkins drawings on social and political satire, jokes, etc, graced the pages of the “Bulletin” over a 30 year period, and sold in great quantities as calendars, postcards and framed etchings. Hopkins also occasionally painted in oil and watercolours. Hopkins was a major advocate of Australia’s becoming an independent republic, achieving full independence from England, and has championed many other social and political causes in Australia as well.

Hopkins in 1876 married Harriett Commager, daughter of Henry Steel Commager, Lieutenant Colonel of the 67th Ohio Infantry, Colonel of the 184th Ohio and Brevet Brigadier General of the U.S. Volunteers; and they had three daughters. Hopkins brother, Owen Johnston Hopkins, was Sergeant of Company E of the 42nd Ohio Infantry Regiment, an also became something of a writer, authoring his memoirs, entitled “Under the Flag of the Nation: Diaries and Letters of Owen Johnston Hopkins, a Yankee Volunteer in the Civil War”; edited by Otto F. Bond. Hopkins daughter, Dorothy June Hopkins Marshall also authored her own work, a biography of her father, “Hop of the Bulletin” which can be found in the “Encyclopedia of Australian Art”; a book from which much of this information came from.  In her biography she describes scenes of battle and carnage in the Battle of Petersburg, as told to her by her father of his revisiting the battleground and a museum of its artifacts; finding among them “one bullet in particular” that he himself had fired at the enemy some fifty years earlier.

Livingston and the family took a train trip cross-country to board the S.S. Australia on January 16, 1883 to migrate to Sydney, Australia; arriving on February 9, 1883 at Port Jackson. H.B. Traill, who introduced him to the Sydney Bulletin, got him to take to Australia the first photo-engraving equipment, which allowed drawings to be photographed and transferred onto metal plates for printing; thus making topical daily cartoons a possibility. Upon arriving in Australia, the family found temporary accommodation in Sydney near the top of William Street, was soon provided with a new studio on Bond Street and then decided he decided to purchase a home, the palatial two story residence of “Fernham” in Raglan Street, Mosman, New South Wales. On February 12, 1883 Livingston signed a three-year contract with the Bulletin and shortly after May 1887, became the chief Sydney Bulletin cartoonist which lasted for decades. Initially employed on a two-year contract, he remained with the Bulletin for 30 years and did an estimated 19,000 drawings for the Bulletin. In his retirement Hop continued to make etchings, violins and violoncellos. Three of his children were born in the United States prior to his moving to Australia, and the remaining three were born in New South Wales.

Hopkins family had long lived at Mosman, in Sydney, New South Wales where years later trees were planted to memorialize early residents, including Livingston Hopkins; who’s old home “Fernham” was situated on Raglan Street. Hopkins lived in New South Wales Australia for some forty-seven years and all but five of his children were born there.

In old age, with his eyesight was failing, Livingston made clock cases. On the evening of August 21, 1927, Livingston was entertaining old friends at his home when he almost collapsed and although in extreme pain, and feeling very weak he made his way up the stairs to his bedroom alone, remarking to his daughter, “I shall be dead tomorrow”. Two hours before he died at Fernham, late at night on August 21, 1927, he delivered a little dissertation on etching to his nurse to entertain her, and according to Dorothy Hopkins his last words when his attendant asked him if he was the man who had been the Bulletin artist were, “Where have you lived all these years?”  .

Livingston Yort Hopkins died at the age of 81 on August 21, 1927 at Mosman, Sydney, New South Wales. The following day on August 22, 1927, Hopkins was graced with a state funeral at which many leading businessmen, politicians and every day citizens attended to pay their respects at the Wood Coffill’s mortuary chapel on George Street after which his body was cremated and buried at Rookwood Cemetery. He was survived by a son and four daughters. His life is forever memorialized by a brass wall plaque in niche 743L.

Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 4,

Compendium of the Rebellion, Frederick H. Dyer

Death Certificate, Livingston York Hopkins, August, 1927

Dictionary of Australian Artists

Encyclopedia of Australian Art

Historical Register of the United States Army, Francis B. Hetman

Hop of the "Bulletin"; Dorothy J. Hopkins

Jim Houston, Cincinnati, Ohio

Lone Hand magazine, December –June 1913, Sydney, New South Wales; ‘Chapters from the

Autobiography of Livingston Hopkins, Illustrated by Himself,’  ‘Confessions of Hop.’

National Library of Australia

Official Roster of the Soldiers of the State of Ohio in the War of the Rebellion, 1861-1866, vol 8

Official Roster of the Soldiers of the State of Ohio

Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

On the Hop, Sydney, 1904

Rookwood Cemetery, Sydney, New South Wales

The Scholarly Journal of the Ohio Historical Society, volume 63, ‘Ohio Artist in Australia: Livingston Hopkins’, Frederick D. Kershner, Jr

The Sydney Morning Herald, August 22, 1927.

Under the Flag of the Nation, Otto F. Bond, editor

Wayne Lowery, Jacksonville, Ohio

130th Ohio Regimental Histories