Beside the entrance of The Stephen Hopkins House two plaques inform visitors about the site. The first gives a brief history of Stephen Hopkins and the second authorizes the site as a Historic Landmark. The second justifies the Stephan Hopkins House as possessing “exceptional value in … illustrating the history of the United States”(figure 2). Merriam Webster dictionary defines “illustration” as “an example or instance that helps make something clear” (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/illustration). Although it aids in the clarification of concept it will never present the full or “real” concept: it is only a representation of what it is attempting to clarify. Consequently, according to the U. S. Department of the Interior, The Stephen Hopkins House informs and evokes.
The commemoration of the life of Stephen Hopkins is delineated by this sites relocation and prevalence in the absence of the residents living body. In commemorating the life Stephen Hopkins one is made to imagine it “as it really was” with anchored points of what is currently presented. The factual information on the plaques, the relocated building, the maintained garden, recreated interior, Hopkins Street, Main Street’s (North and South) progression from the building’s original site to the North Burial Ground, and the grave and monument of Stephan Hopkins are all available to the visitor. Given to the visitor, these sites create a foundation for an illustration that evokes an imagination in each individual of what Stephen Hopkins life would have been like had these absences (the context of the building in the mid-eighteenth century and the living body of Stephen Hopkins) been present. Although the imagination of each visitor is not accurate it is a product of the illustration, and thus a process of commemorating that personalizes and informs one of history that one is not present for. For each individual the Stephen Hopkins commemorative sites illustrate a memory of Stephen Hopkins life that one could not have had otherwise.
(figure 2: The second plaque at the entrance of the Stephen Hopkins House. http://freepages.college-alumni.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~blauss.html)
