Samuel Hooper (February 3, 1808 – February 14, 1875) was a businessman and

member of Congress A member of congress (MOC), also known as a congressman or congresswoman, is a person who has been appointed or elected and inducted into an official body called a congress, typically to represent a particular constituency in a legislature. The t ...

from

Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...

Early life

Hooper was born in

Marblehead, Massachusetts Marblehead is a coastal New England town in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States, along the North Shore (Massachusetts), North Shore. Its population was 20,441 at the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census. The town lies on a small peninsu ...

. His father, Robert Hooper, was a shipping merchant and later served as president of the Grand Bank of Marblehead. After a common school education, Hooper traveled aboard his father's shipping vessels as supercargo. He is known to have visited Cuba, Russia, and Spain. In 1832 Hooper married Ann Sturgis, daughter of William Sturgis, and he became a junior partner in the Boston firm of Bryant and Sturgis, merchants in the California hide trade, trade with the

Pacific Northwest The Pacific Northwest (PNW; ) is a geographic region in Western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Though no official boundary exists, the most common ...

, and trade with

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

Business career

In 1841, Hooper partnered with

counting house Counting is the process of determining the number of Element (mathematics), elements of a finite set of objects; that is, determining the size (mathematics), size of a set. The traditional way of counting consists of continually increasing a (men ...

owner and merchant shipper William Appleton to form William Appleton and Company. Soon the firm was engaged in the California hide trade, trade with the Pacific Northwest, and trade with China. The firm acquired additional partners in 1851 when Appleton joined the Massachusetts congressional delegation. In 1859, Appleton retired from William Appleton and Company. Hooper reorganized the firm with partner Franklin Gordon Dexter, and they adopted the name Samuel Hooper and Company. The firm continued operations after Hooper's death.

Political career

Hooper was elected to the

Massachusetts House of Representatives The Massachusetts House of Representatives is the lower house of the Massachusetts General Court, the State legislature (United States), state legislature of Massachusetts. It is composed of 160 members elected from 14 counties each divided into ...

, serving from 1851 to 1853. He later served in the

Massachusetts Senate The Massachusetts Senate is the upper house of the Massachusetts General Court, the bicameral state legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The Senate comprises 40 elected members from 40 single-member senatorial districts in the st ...

in 1858. Upon the resignation of his friend and former partner, Congressman William Appleton from the

United States House of Representatives The United States House of Representatives is a chamber of the Bicameralism, bicameral United States Congress; it is the lower house, with the U.S. Senate being the upper house. Together, the House and Senate have the authority under Artic ...

, Hooper was elected to fill the seat, representing Massachusetts's fifth district in the 37th Congress. He was reelected to the following six congresses representing Massachusetts's fourth district and served as chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means 1869 to 1871, of the Committee on Banking and Currency from 1871 to 1873 and of the Committee on Coinage, Weights and Measures from 1871 to 1875. From 1861 to 1862, his home in Washington D.C. was the headquarters of General

George B. McClellan George Brinton McClellan (December 3, 1826 – October 29, 1885) was an American military officer and politician who served as the 24th governor of New Jersey and as Commanding General of the United States Army from November 1861 to March 186 ...

. In 1866, he was a delegate to the Philadelphia Loyalists' Convention. He turned down reelection to the 44th Congress and died less than a month before completion of his final term. He was interred in Oak Hill Cemetery in 1875. Hooper was briefly the father-in-law of

Charles Sumner Charles Sumner (January 6, 1811March 11, 1874) was an American lawyer and statesman who represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1851 until his death in 1874. Before and during the American Civil War, he was a leading American ...

, a powerful senator from Massachusetts. Sumner had married Hooper's widowed daughter-in law, Alice Mason Hooper, but they divorced after a short marriage.

Philanthropy

In 1865 Hooper founded the Hooper School of Mining and Practical Geology at

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

with an endowment of $50,000. The gift also established the Sturgis Hooper Professorship in Geology. Named in honor of Hooper's deceased son Sturgis, the professorship received an additional endowment of $30,000 (~$ in ) from Hooper's widow in 1881. The city of Hooper, Nebraska, is named after him.
1925 edition
is available for download a
University of Nebraska—Lincoln Digital Commons.
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Publications

Currency or money: its nature and uses and the effects of the circulation of bank-notes for currency (1855)

An Examination of the Theory and the Effect of Laws Regulating the Amount of Specie in Banks (1860)

A defence of the merchants of Boston against aspersions of the Hon. John Z. Goodrich, ex-collector of customs (1866)

References

External links

* * . Manuscript Division,

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...

, Washington, D.C. , - , - , - , - {{DEFAULTSORT:Hooper, Samuel 1808 births 1875 deaths Burials at Oak Hill Cemetery (Washington, D.C.) Harvard University people Republican Party Massachusetts state senators Massachusetts Unionists Republican Party members of the Massachusetts House of Representatives People from Marblehead, Massachusetts Republican Party members of the United States House of Representatives from Massachusetts 19th-century members of the Massachusetts General Court 19th-century members of the United States House of Representatives