Edward W. Hooper


Captain Edward William Hooper, known as E. W. Hooper and also colloquially as Ned, was aide-de-camp on the staff of Union Generals Rufus Saxton, Department of the South and John Adams Dix, Department of the East during the American Civil War from 1862 to 1865. Hooper also served as private secretary to General Saxton, during which time he was given the rank of Captain. He was also post commander and military governor in the South Carolina Sea Islands. Subsequently, he became steward and later treasurer of Harvard College.

Life and family

Edward William Hooper was the son of Ellen Sturgis and Robert W. Hooper and the grandson of William Sturgis. His siblings were Marian "Clover" Hooper Adams an American socialite, active society hostess and arbiter of Washington, D.C., and accomplished amateur photographer and Ellen Sturgis "Nella" Hooper, who married professor Ephraim Whitman Gurney. The Hooper family was wealthy and prominent. Hooper's birthplace and childhood home in Boston was at 114 Beacon Street, Beacon Hill. When he was nine years old, his mother, a Transcendentalist poet, died. Hooper attended Harvard College and after graduating in the class of 1859, he entered Harvard Law School and receiving the degree of LL.B. in 1861. Hooper married Fanny Hudson Chapin on July 6, 1864; their daughter Ellen Sturgis Hooper married John Briggs Potter in 1908.
Early in the American Civil War he enlisted in the army, serving on the staffs of Generals Saxton and Dix. He was sent to Port Royal, South Carolina in March 1862 as part of a contingent of teachers & school administrators from the New England Freedmen's Aid Society, of which his father was vice-president. He served on the staff of Gen. Saxton in the Department of the South as a Captain from March 13, 1865. He later served on Gen. Dix's staff in the Department of the East in New York and was given a promotion to Brevet Major on Jan 15, 1866. After the war, Hooper returned to Boston opened an office and lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts at the Hooper-Eliot House, a Stick style house built in 1872 for Hooper.
In 1872, he became steward of Harvard College, an office he held for two years. He was chosen as the treasurer of Harvard in 1876, and continued in that position until 1898. His administration of the financial affairs of the college was noted to be remarkable for its skill and success "...in spite of adverse conditions and troublous times." On his retirement from Harvard in 1899, he received the degree of LL.D. After his retirement, Hooper devoted his time to the care of large trust properties and was one of the original trustees of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. He was also one of the managers of the Suffolk Savings Bank in Boston. He died of pneumonia at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts on June 25, 1901 after a short illness.

Documentation

His papers, dated from 1862–1866, relating to military service in South Carolina and New York during the Civil War are in the collection of the Houghton Library at Harvard University. They consist of 2 boxes of documents and were a gift of Mrs. John B. Potter in 1962. The papers primarily consist of financial reports, invoices, receipts, and other documents relating to Hooper's term of service. Some letters are included in the collection; among them are three from Edward L. Pierce to Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury, concerning the Port Royal Experiment. Captain Hooper was serving on the staff of General Saxton during the Port Royal Experiment. A letter, dated February 23, 1863, from Captain Edward W. Hooper to Henry W. Foote is in the collection of the Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
When he testified before the American Freedmen's Inquiry Commission, Hooper said: