Edward William Hooper was the son of
Ellen Sturgis (1812–1848) and Robert W. Hooper (1810–1885) and the grandson of
William Sturgis. His siblings were
Marian "Clover" Hooper Adams (September 13, 1843 – December 6, 1885) an American socialite, active society hostess and arbiter of Washington, D.C., and accomplished amateur photographer and Ellen Sturgis "Nella" Hooper (1838–1887), who married professor Ephraim Whitman Gurney (1829–1886). 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 (1844–1881) on July 6, 1864; their daughter Ellen Sturgis Hooper (born 1872) 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==