Dr. Ellen Moore Hopkins

Pentecostal Assemblies of the World

1911 ~ 2000

Dr. Ellen Moore Hopkins was born in Liberia, West Africa, of Congolese parents on June 6, 1911. After an extensive education in America, beginning at age 12, she returned to her native land where she established an entire educational campus, encompassing students from Headstart through junior college. She was not only a teacher, but a registered nurse, a licensed midwife and held a Doctor of Divinity degree. She was the widow of Bishop Easter Hopkins.

This talented generous individual was born in Talla, meaning "to look", in the the Republic of Liberia. She was adopted by the late Bishop  and Sister Samuel K. Grimes of New York City, former missionaries to West Africa. She wrote Bishop Grimes requesting help with her education after finding a copy of The Christian Outlook lying along a Liberian road. Bishop and Sister Grimes helped facilitate her education in the United States. Dr. Hopkins attended school in Lawrenceville, Virginia. After receiving her high school diploma from St. Paul Polytechnic Institute, she graduated from Lincoln School of Nursing as a registered nurse. She continued her education at Maternity Center in New York and became a licensed midwife.

She studied abstetric management at Margurette Hauge School for Nurses and pediatrics at Cook County School of Nursing in Chicago. Upon returning to Virginia she received a B.S. Degree in Public Health Nursing Education from Medical College of Virginia, a Master's Degree at University of America in Washington, D.C., and a Doctor of Divinity degree from Aenon Bible College, then located in Columbus, Ohio.

Upon her return to Liberia following her education in the United tates, in 1946, Dr. Hopkins founded the Samuel K. Grimes Child Welfare Center in Kakata, Liberia, in a warehouse which was gradually developed over the years into an organized Christian community of 14 buildings including schools, a 1,000 seat church, a maternity hospital, two medical clinica, three dormitories and two cafeterias. During her 33 years of service in Liberia Dr. Hopkins cared for 700 orphaned and indigent children, delivered approximately 5,000 babies and trained 136 nurses who served all over Liberia. She aggresively taught the people of Liberia, especially mothers of children, how to save lives by sterilizing water and baby bottles, and how to incure cleanliness at childbirth. Many mothers were saved from tetanus, and their babies from dysentery that killed so many children and infants. Day by night, by the light of her lamp, Dr. Hopkins would teach the principles she learned in America, while also providing educational programs for the youth of Liberia. So extensive and impacting was her work that her story was featured in The Saturday Evening Post 1953 article, "The House that Saves Lives" and in 1951 in Ebony Magazine which the editor dubbed her "The Lady with the Lamp".

Dr. Hopkins was cited in Who's Who of American Women, The International Dictionarate, and was awarded the Dr. W.V.S. Tubman Liberian National Award. Dr Hopkins served vigorously and diligently over thirty years in Liberia before having to flee the country due to civil war. During her time in the United States she continued to minister and publish "The Church Woman's Inspirator" a series of teachings for women. Dr. Hopkins departed this life, March 11, 2000, in Zanesville, Ohio.