In 1831, the senior Hope moved south to Augusta, Georgia, where he became a successful businessman. He later formed a relationship with Mary Frances Taylor. State law prohibited interracial marriage, but they lived openly as a couple to the end of his life and had a family. Of majority European ancestry, their son John Hope was European in appearance and could have passed for white. But, he identified with the African American community and devoted his life to its education and advancement in the postwar segregated South.