She was born in
Boston, Massachusetts, the third and youngest child of
Robert William Hooper (1810 – April 15, 1885) and
Ellen H. Sturgis (1812–November 3, 1848). Her siblings were Ellen Sturgis "Nella" Hooper (1838–1887), who married professor Ephraim Whitman Gurney (1829–1886); and
Edward William "Ned" Hooper (1839–1901). The Hooper family was wealthy and prominent. Adams' birthplace and childhood home in Boston was at 114 Beacon Street,
Beacon Hill. When she was five years old, her mother, a
Transcendentalist poet, died and she became very close to her physician father. She was
privately educated at a
girls school in
Cambridge, which was run by
Elizabeth and
Louis Agassiz. Adams volunteered for the
Sanitary Commission during the
Civil War. She defied convention by insisting on watching the
review of
William Tecumseh Sherman and
Ulysses S. Grant's armies in 1865. In 1866, she traveled abroad, where she is said to have met fellow Bostonian Henry Adams in
London. Her father and she were living at their home in
Beverly, Massachusetts, in July 1870. On June 27, 1872, Adams and she were married in Boston, and spent their honeymoon in Europe. Upon their return, he taught at
Harvard and their home at 91 Marlborough Street, Boston, Her gossipy letters to her father, other family members, and friends, reveal her to be a gifted reporter and provide an insightful view of the Washington and politics of the day, while the ones she wrote from Europe are not ordinary travel letters, but shrewd reflections on character and society, revealing a critical and sprightly mind. From her reports written in letters, it was widely speculated that actually Clover Hooper Adams was the "anonymous" author of
Democracy: An American Novel (1880), which was not credited to her husband until 43 years later. ==Photography==