His mother went to work in the home of the childless Hopkins family who treated Timothy as the child they did not have.

[1][2] Timothy Hopkins married Mary Kellogg Crittenden, a niece of Mary Hopkins, in 1882 and were given a 280-acre estate, Sherwood Hall, formerly the Thurlow estate, in Menlo Park (bounded by Ravenswood road, Middlefield road, San Francisquito Creek and the Caltrain railroad tracks); though they also lived in San Francisco.

Lots were sold but under a covenant that forbade the sale of alcoholic beverages and a railroad station was built to serve the new university (Mayfield, a community just to the south with an already existing station was well known for its drinking establishments and the Stanfords wanted a dry town associated with the university).

[1][8] He died on New Years Day 1936 of pneumonia in Stanford Hospital, then located in San Francisco, and was buried on January 3 at Cypress Lawn Memorial Park.

[2] Timothy Hopkins' will gave his widow a lifetime use of his estate and at her death in 1941 most of it went to Stanford University.