Samuel Hooper

Samuel Hooper (February 3, 1808 – February 14, 1875) was a businessman and member of Congress from Massachusetts.

Early life Hooper was born in Marblehead, Massachusetts. 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, and trade with China.

Business career In 1841, Hooper partnered with counting house 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. In 1866, Hooper 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, 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 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.

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)