Edward W. Hooper

Edward William Hooper (1839–1901), known as E.W. Hooper, served as aide-de-camp on the staff of General Rufus Saxton, Department of the South and on the staff of General John Adams Dix, Department of the East during the American Civil War from 1862 to 1865. He was also post commander and military governor in the South Carolina Sea Islands. Subsequently, Hooper was treasurer of Harvard College (from 1876 to 1898).

Life and family
Edward William Hooper was the son of Ellin Sturgis (1812–1848) and Robert W. Hooper (1810–1885). Hooper was born in Boston in 1839. After graduating from Harvard College in the class of 1859, he entered Harvard Law School and received a degree in 1861. He enlisted in the army during the Civil War, serving on the staffs of Generals Saxton and Dix. Hooper married Fanny Hudson Chapin (d. 1881) in 1864; their daughter Ellen Sturgis Hooper (b. 1872) married John Briggs Potter in 1908. After the war, Hooper returned to Boston and lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts at the Hooper-Eliot House, a Stick style house built in 1872 for Hooper. In 1876, he became treasurer of Harvard College, and was awarded the academic degree LL.D. in 1899. After his retirement, he 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 (1 linear ft.) 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. Capt. Hooper was serving on the staff of Gen. Rufus Saxton during the Port Royal Experiment. A letter, dated 23 February 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. "I came to this department without any knowledge of the negro character, prepared to meet a race of savages not only thirsting for 'the horrors of a servile insurrection,' but quite ready to tear me limb from limb unless I could succeed in making myself agreeable to them. I have since found them, as a very general rule, gentle and ready to obey reasonable orders—almost too gentle in many cases to stand up for their own rights."—E.W. Hooper, Captain and Aid-de-Camp to General Saxton – Beaufort, Jan. 6, 1863.