Stephen Hopkins came on the Mayflower with Elizabeth Hopkins, possibly his second wife, although her situation is not clear and she may have been Hopkins' third or even fourth wife. His children Giles and Constance, are referred to by Bradford as being children of a former wife, who may have been Hopkins' first wife, although this also is not clear. This wife was also probably the mother of an older daughter Elizabeth who may have been deceased prior to the Mayflower departure.[12]:122 Author Simon Neal, in a June 2012 Mayflower Quarterly article on this family, for purposes of convenience, assumes Elizabeth to be Hopkins' second wife and the mother of Giles and Constance to be children of the unknown first wife. The identity of his wife Elizabeth is unknown, although there is a marriage record in the parish registers of St. Mary Whitechapel in London for a Stephen Hopkins to Elizabeth Fisher on 19 February 1617/18, and it has been commonly established that this is the second marriage of Mayflower passenger Stephen Hopkins. Although it cannot be particularly assumed that this was Hopkins' second marriage, it does fit into the time period.[12]:122 Although there is no evidence found to date of what happened to the Stephen Hopkins and Elizabeth Fisher who married at St. Mary Whitechapel, author Simon Neal assumes that they were the Mayflower couple for the purposes of his research on this family. A search by Neal of baptisms in St. Mary Whitechapel in the second half of the 16th century reveals an Elizabeth Fisher who was baptized on 3 March 1582, but her father is not named and it is almost impossible to find out anything about her family. This Elizabeth would have been about age 35 when she married Stephen Hopkins and would have been close to his age, as he was thought to have been born about 1581.[12]:123
Neal concludes that it is not possible to trace the origins of the Elizabeth Fisher who married Stephen Hopkins in the parish of St. Mary Whitechapel. She could have been from that parish or somewhere nearby in London or Stepney and of the Fisher family of Great Coates in North-east Lincolnshire. Neal emphasizes that there is no conclusive evidence that this is the same couple who embarked on the Mayflower but is assumed by most genealogists to be so.[12]:125 Elizabeth had already died when her husband Stephen wrote his will on 6 June 1644, as in it he asks to be buried next to his deceased wife Elizabeth.[4]:167