She was a Brookings Institution scholar, editor of the Henry Clay Papers and served in leadership roles in the Organization of American Historians, the Southern Historical Association; in 1975 was elected president of the Agricultural History Society.
[1] An excellent student she won a full scholarship to Bucknell University and graduated in 1935 with a triple major in history, English and the social studies.
When they arrived in Kentucky, Mary Wilma Hargreaves met Thomas D. Clark in the History Department who invited her to guest lecture in his classes on American land policy, the subject of her dissertation.
By 1957 with a grant from the Eli Lilly Endowment and sponsored as part of a program by the National Archives and Records Division, Hopkins was appointed editor-in-chief of the Henry Clay Papers and Hargreaves was hired as associate editor.
[1] She wrote three major works, two of which focused on the economic history of the agricultural practices used in the high plains, with interpretations on the formation of national land policy and the socioeconomic problems associated with that.
By the 1970s she was writing important groundbreaking articles to update and expand upon her original work on the history of the American west, broadening her analysis to include studies of women's critical roles in agriculture and the settlement of the Great Plains.
[4] She followed in Thomas D. Clark's footsteps when she won the Theodore Hallam Professor Award of the UK History Department for outstanding achievement.