William Hooper

Categories: 1742 births | 1790 deaths | Continental Congressmen | Members of the North Carolina State House | Signers of the U.S. Declaration of Independence

William Hooper (June 28, 1742–October 14, 1790), was a signer of the United States Declaration of Independence as a representative of North Carolina.

He was born in Boston, Massachusetts the son of William Hooper who emigrated from Scotland after studying at the University of Edinburgh. William Hooper senior was minister at Trinity Church in Boston and entered his son in the Boston Latin School. William Hooper the younger enrolled in the sophomore class at Harvard College at the age of 15, graduating in 1760. He studied law and settled in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1767. Prior to moving to North Carolina he served an apprenticeship with James Otis. He attended the Continental Congress in 1774, resigning in 1776. During the war his plantation Finian on Masonboro Sound in the Cape Fear area of North Carolina was burned when the British occupied Wilmington. He was appointed a Federal judge in 1789 but served only a year because of ill health. He is buried behind a small Presbyterian church in Hillsborough, North Carolina. His body was moved in 1894 to Guilford Courthouse national military park where it resides with that of William Penn. His last known residence, the Nash-Hooper house, still stands at 118 West Tryon street in Hillsborough, North Carolina. Several members of his family are interred under a monument at the University of North Caronina at Chapel Hill.