Uncle Dick and Aunt Leona in Michigan hadn't seen their Ohio kinfolks in many years. They decided a visit was due and in the spring of 1960 plans were made with one of their children's families to drive to a farm located along a country lane named Measley Ridge outside the village of Peebles in southern Ohio. They would stay with Dick's sister, Mary, and her husband, Jesse, and one of their children's families that included husband, wife and two of their youngest children. All together, that would be eleven people, representing three generations, living in the same small house on a farm... with cows, chickens, hogs, ducks, dogs, cats and a parakeet.

After passing through the downtown area, crossing the railroad tracks and reaching the southern edge of Peebles, the travelers took notice of a beautiful home with large shade trees sitting in the middle of a well-trimmed yard with a neatly kept pond nearby. The site was surrounded by fields of small rolling hills, their boundaries marked with white rail fencing. On the opposite side of the highway was an unusually long building, two stories high on the end built into the hillside so that the parking area and the entry were even with the top level, and a few stories high on the end facing the small valley toward the village. It was painted bright red and in front was a sign that read, “HOP IN THE WOODS.” Excitement among the visitors in the car began to build. There was a good possibility the building housed an activity that would get everyone off the farm for a little while and make it a trip to remember. After they arrived and the planning was under way for the rest of the visit, their excitement died quickly when it was explained the building they had noticed was home to a furniture store and not an establishment for refreshments and late night dancing.

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The boy's full name was George Stewart Hopping. He was born in 1881 on a farm located near Clifton in Greene County, Ohio, becoming the last of the three Hopping children. The family called him Stewart, the maiden name of his mother, Mary Eliza “Lida' Stewart. His father was David Ryan Hopping, a civil war veteran of the 110th Ohio Infantry who was wounded while fighting in the battle of Spotsylvania Court House in Virginia and was a prisoner of war in Winchester, Virginia. Lida died at the age of thirty-nine when Stewart was only seven years old. Mr. Hopping remarried, taking Flora C. Campbell from Ripley, Ohio, as his second wife, a woman Stewart
described as “wonderful.”

According to written and oral accounts, Stewart started at a very young age helping with the work on the family farm. When he was barely a teenager he sold candy, popcorn and peanuts as an agent of the Creighton and Jackson Candy Company and also worked at a cider mill company. He became a circus clown for the J. B. Wallace Circus at the age of sixteen, traveling throughout the mid-west.

He helped his father and mother sell fruits and vegetables as a store clerk at the age of eighteen. All the while he kept up with his educational studies, completed elementary school in Greene County and graduated from Jamestown High School in 1900.  He then began work as a telephone lineman troubleshooter throughout the middle of the United States. During that nine year period he traveled north to Wisconsin, south to Texas and everywhere in between. He eventually was selected to manage the telephone office in Jamestown, a position he held for a little over two years. He broadened his knowledge of the industry when he switched to constructing phone facilities in Ohio and Kentucky and he learned how to install and operate new transmission lines.

During this period of time, he met two people who had the most impact on his life. At one point, Stewart was in Temple, Texas, wanting to return home to Ohio, but was without any money for a train ticket. He wired a message to his father requesting twenty dollars. His father replied that he didn't give Stewart the money to get there and he wasn't going to give him the money to leave there. Stewart decided he would never again be dependent on anyone else. Through a series of events, he befriended a train conductor who supplied him with a small amount of money and a plan to get back to Ohio. Stewart kept his promise to pay back the loan. He also kept a promise to keep in touch with the conductor throughout his life. Even after the man's death, he stayed in
contact with the man's family.

While attending to matters on the family farm, Stewart's next career came about as the result of answering a newspaper ad for a Mr. Bartel in Chicago, who was looking for auctioneers. He even completed a course in auctioning at the Jones National School of Auction in Chicago, graduating in 1909. While there, he began pursuing a relationship with a woman he had met while working for the telephone company. When he made
repairs or completed an installation, he would call the central office to make sure all connections were completed. He fell in love with the voice at the other end of the phone line, the voice of Pearl Timmons of Rensselaer, Indiana, the second person, but most significant person, to impact his life. The courting continued and the couple married on March 17, 1910. Mrs. Hopping joined Mr. Hopping in Loveland, Ohio where he had
returned to farming with his family. In a short period of time, he united with J. D. Sorrell to establish a real estate sales and auction company named Hopping & Sorrell.  Sorrell was a tobacco farmer, owner of a stone quarry, part owner of a grocery and meat market, and a seller and trader of land along the Gulf Coast.

In 1924, Hop, Pearl and their ten year old son, Dale, moved to Adams County, where they took over ownership of the Harshaville Mill through a real estate deal, and opened their first furniture store, leasing a building on the northwest corner of Main and Franklin Streets in Peebles. Six years later, they purchased 43 acres south of the town's corporation and built a “big red barn in the woods.” The phrase “Stop And Swap With Hop In The Woods” was born.

About the time the furniture barn was being built, their son, Dale, graduated from Peebles High School at the age of sixteen. He began working and became a valuable part of the Peebles Auction and Sales Company that was still being operated by his father. Dale was well on his way to operating his own profitable business, even taking part in the advertising and owning his own trucks. However, in January, 1935, after an illness of only a few days, pneumonia took his life. He was twenty-one years old.

Hop pressed on, even making plans for another piece of property he had acquired along the way. He proposed the Adams County Free Museum in memory of their son be built near the store. The plans were set aside due to the lack of any infrastructure such as water and sewage. His idea was considered again a few years later and made it to the plans on paper stage with planners and administrators being selected. Despite all the details and decisions that were made, the project again failed to materialize. It was a few years later after the Hoppings had passed that the property was divided. Several businesses, homes, churches and other concerns took their places along Route 41 south of Peebles. There apparently were no formal directives left by the Hoppings, but their most loyal employee, Lawrence Tracy, received a few portions of the property, including the store, along with funds to help continue it's operation. Lawrence and his wife, Georgia, had assisted the Hoppings in many ways for over fifty years.