Wayne County, NC - Heritage Series

Reprinted with permission of the Mount Olive Tribune and cannot be 
reproduced without permission. 
Transcribed by Linda Harmon.

                     William Hooper, The Signer

"Our Heritage "
By Claude Moore

It is singular that none of the three signers of the Declaration of 
Independence from North Carolina were natives of North Carolina, but all 
three came to North Carolina when they were young.  William Hooper was the 
most outstanding of the three.

William Hooper was born in 1742 in Boston, Massachusetts, and his father, 
William Hooper, a native of Scotland, was for many years rector of Trinity 
Church in Boston.  Young William Hooper spent seven years at the famous 
Boston Latin School.  He later attended Harvard College where he graduated 
in 1760.  He then studied law under James Otis.

William Hooper came to Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1764.  In 1767 he 
married Ann Clark, who was from an old Wilmington family.  He built a house 
on the west side of Third Street between Market and Princess Streets.  He 
also built a plantation house called "Finian Hall" at Masonborough Sound.

William Hooper had a large clientele among the Cape Fear planters and the 
merchants of Wilmington.  In 1770-1 he was appointed deputy Attorney General
of North Carolina.  In 1770, he was elected as an avowed Whig to the 
Colonial Assembly, representing New Hanover along with John Ashe.  He was 
elected to the first Continental Congress in 1774 and he was active in the 
Congressional debates.  He signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

In 1777, Hooper resigned from Congress and returned to Wilmington.  He was 
elected to the North Carolina House of Commons and served until 1786.  When 
the British occupied Wilmington in January 1781, they destroyed his 
plantation buildings.  In 1782 he moved to Hillsborough, and is old house 
there is still standing.

William Hooper had a brother, George Hooper who moved from Boston to 
Wilmington and became a prosperous merchant.  He was a graduate of the 
University of Edinburgh and was quite an intellectual.  During the American 
Revolution, he remained loyal to the Crown, but did not take an active part 
in the Revolution.  He was highly respected by the Whigs and when President 
Washington came to Wilmington in 1791, George Hooper was on the Receiving 
Committee.  His grandson, Professor Deberniere Hooper was at one time a 
teacher at the Wayne Female College in Goldsboro.

William Hooper died on October 14, 1790, and was buried in Hillsborough, 
but in 1894, his body was moved to Guilford Courthouse national Military 
Park, near Greensboro.  He left two sons and a daughter.  Several members 
of his family are buried under a monument on the campus of the University 
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by
Linda Harmon <lharmon@ex.oci.pcc.edu>

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