Hopwood DePree - Downton Shabby: One Americans Ultimate DIY Adventure Restoring His Familys English Castle

This book is dedicated to my father, my grandfather, and all those who came before me

I t was one of those nights when you hope your biggest responsibility will be uncorking a bottle of wine. Little did I know that an internet search was about to change my life, upending my entire understanding of my purpose on this planet, my place in the bigger continuum of history, and what a home improvement project can really mean.

It was spring 2013, and I was at home in Los Angeles in the Hollywood Hills. There was only one helicopter circling overhead, so it was quieter than usual. Outside the window, daylight was fading into dusk, and the desk lamp glowed amber next to me as I sat down at my laptop.

That evening, as had become my new secret wine-time relaxation habit, I started clicking around on ancestry sites: WikiTree.com, Ancestry.com, Myheritage.com. I was familiar with all of them. Whenever I had a half hour or so to spare, Id dig a bit further along the twists and turns of my ancestral tree. If youve never been on one of these sites, let me warn you: They are seriously addicting. A half hour can easily turn into a few hours or all night, so I often had to limit myself. Find a copy of some yellowed document youve never seen before and then youre clicking on another link, which takes you to proof of an unknown second cousin four times removed, and before you know it youve found an old black-and-white photograph of some long-deceased great-aunt. It can be dizzying. Spend enough time on these sites, and youll start to feel like a detective on the trail, following breadcrumbs of evidence, except in this mystery most of the people in the story are already dead and have been for decades.

Until recently, it was true that Id always been the kind of person who focused on the future; I didnt spend much time looking behind me. But lately, that had changed. I was becoming more and more curious about the past. How had I gotten sucked into genealogy searches? I know it wasnt thanks to the shows on TV featuring celebrities tracing their family history, because I didnt watch those. And it wasnt that I hoped to find some lost relative or uncover a family secret. If I had to say exactly why I was willing to spend hours of my life learning about people I didnt know and was never going to meet, I would say a lot of it had to do with loss. Loss, and probably some regret too.

Until recently, my grandfather on my mothers side had been our family genealogist. His name was Herbert Hopwood Black, but I called him Pap. He had an infectious grin and was over six feet tall, so when I was a little kid, he always looked like a smiling giant. As I was growing up, Pap used to love to tell me stories about our Hopwood ancestors and how they had founded the small town of Hopwood, Pennsylvania, in 1791. Pap should know. He had been born and bred in Hopwood. The only reason he left his beloved hometown in the 1920s was because he was offered an opportunity in Michigan to get involved with a rapidly growing company called General Motors. To the end of his days, he couldnt have been prouder of our connection to Hopwood and that we could trace our family tree there back eight generations. Or was it seven?

The problem was, as a kid, Id never really listened.

From my perspective, anything to do with Hopwood was problematic. Yes, my name is Hopwood, just like my grandpa, but from a very early age, I hated my name. Calling me Hopwood had been my moms ideashe chose it as a tribute to her father and his side of the family. When I was a baby and toddler, it was fine: Hopwood got shortened to Hoppy or Woody, which in preschool was considered pretty cute. It was only when I got to kindergarten that the teasing began. The other kids thought Hopwood was hilarious. They said I should have been called John. Or Steve. Things got so bad that I came home from school one day and told my parents Id had enough.

I dont want to be Hopwood anymore! I declared as I pushed over a wooden plant stand, hearing it crack as it hit the ground. I felt bad looking at the damage Id caused, the fern tipped over with dirt spilling out of its side.

My dad, always a loving pragmatist, had seen this outburst coming. When I was born, he insisted at the last minute that my mom also give me the name Tod as a backup to Hopwood in case I didnt like it. (My dads initials were T.O.D.)

Being Tod was a major relief. The kids stopped teasing me. I got on with life. But this didnt stop my grandfather from drilling me about the Hopwoods of generations long ago. He loved anything to do with family history.

My mom was cut from the same cloth. When I was six years old, she dragged me and my two sisters to Hopwood, Pennsylvania, to visit the town of our ancestors. She was serious about giving us an education in the past. I remember on that trip she marched us around graveyards, where we were forced to do creepy gravestone rubbings alongside thorns, poison ivy, and dried bird poop. To this day, I can picture my mom wearing her signature stylish pantsuit, with stacked black hair, lipstick, and cat-eye sunglasses, as we tackled an array of educational adventures. At one point, Mom made us pose in front of the town sign: HOPWOOD . I refused to smile.

After lunch, in front of one of our ancestors nineteenth-century houses, she was able to coax a momentary grin out of me by promising me a new Batman costume.

Hopwood and sisters visiting Hopwood, Pennsylvania, 1976

Photo by Deanna DePree

Someday, youll be glad you took this photo, she added.

Still scarred from my kindergarten experience, I remember being terrified that someone from my class was going to drive by and see me. (This was unlikely, as our hometown of Holland, Michigan, was about five hundred miles away, but even so.)

In high school, I continued to go by Tod. My high school yearbook lists me as Tod H. DePree, which was horrifying to me at the time because it meant everyone asked what the H stood for. I refused to tell them. Not even my closest friends knew I was Hopwood. Apparently, at graduation I was called out onstage as Tod Hopwood DePree, giving the game away, but I think I must have blocked out the memory because I dont remember it. Even the sound of the word Hopwood was enough to make me wince. And so, when my grandfather gave me his history lessons, Id pretty much tune them out.

All these years later, sitting at my laptop, I knew bits and pieces of our family chronology, although there were some big holes in my understanding. I knew that my Hopwood ancestors came to these shores from England sometime in the 1700s, founding the town of Hopwood soon after. Then, at a certain point in the 1800s, the American side of the Hopwood line came close to dying out when my grandfathers grandmotherAlcinda Hopwoodgot married. Alcinda was the last to carry the Hopwood name since, once married, she would take her husbands last name, and the Hopwood line would be over. This bothered her for much of her life, and so when her grandsonmy grandfatherwas born, she demanded his parents give him Hopwood as a middle name. Which is how the name was passed down to me.

But there was one more piece of information my grandfather told me that had lodged in my childish brain.

When Pap sat me on his knee and told me stories about my Hopwood ancestors, hed always talked about how there was also a vast area of land called Hopwood in England where our ancestors had built a magnificent castle.

When your Hopwood ancestors came to America, they left behind the grandest castle youve ever seen, hed say lowering his voice.