Printer, Omaha Daily News

1918 Draft Registration Records show John Young Hooper's occupation as printer, and his employer as the Omaha Daily News. The Omaha Daily News published from 1899 to 1927.

1918 Family Residence

World War I Draft Records show that John Young Hooper & family lived at 3119 N. 58th Benson, Nebraska. Benson is now part of Omaha, and this house, at 3119 N 58th St., Omaha, was built in 1910. So I think its a good guess that this is the house where John lived with his wife Edna and daughter Alice during the 1910s.

This house is currently on the market, priced at $119,000. I'd love to buy it!

5:00 p.m., December 25, 1905

Here is one of the photos from Brittny. I love this picture!

"Xmas at John's" refers, I believe to John Young Hooper Jr. and his home in Omaha Nebraska. My grandmother Elizabeth Alice Hooper, who was born in June 1904, is-- I believe-- the "AH" in the photo and appears to be a toddler; hence the 1905 date.

Upper row left to right: (N.H.) Nellie Hooper, (F.H.) Frank Lee Harris Hooper, (G.H.) Gertrude Hooper, unknown, (E.H.) Edna Eddy Hooper. Next (middle) row: unknown, (ma) Helen Baldwin Hooper, (AH) Alice Hooper, (FC?) unknown, (MH?) Myrl Hooper. Lady at bottom is unknown, but I believe the child in her lap (LH) is Lester Hooper.

This is the only photo I have ever seen of my grandmother with her family!

Note the clock in the back... shows the time as 5:00.

Brittny + Ginny = Good Karma

For 5 years I have made a habit of "returning" old photos, documents, and books. I buy items at flea markets... old photos with names written on back, photo albums with traceable clues, old Bibles with family trees. I spend minutes or hours (or days) researching on Ancestry.com and other online sources to find descendants. When I can make a connection, I mail the item and I never ask for (or accept) any payment, including for postage.

I do this in part because I love doing it... I love learning the history and I love the idea of precious family items finding its way home. But I must admit another reason... I fervently hoped that someone would do it for me! Or, at least, I would rack up enough karma points to have a shot at seeing old photographs or finding information about my own family... people whom I've spent hours researching and people whom I have so precious little information.

Well... it worked! Perhaps thanks to karma, definitely thanks to Brittny and Ginny, every minute-- every penny-- every effort I spent returning family history to strangers has been repaid. Long lost cousins Brittny and Ginny have provided invaluable, terrific, amazing information. Some of the folks to whom I've mailed items to have told me "I'll never be able to thank you." Now I say to Ginny & Brittny: "I'll never be able to thank YOU!"

Up until now, most of my ancestors have been faceless. Brittny has shared photographs that have given some of these ancestors faces. And Ginny has provided a copy of a letter that is rich-- very rich-- in biographical details that I could never have hoped to learn. It's the kind of thing that family researchers like myself dream about.

Sincere thanks to both Ginny & Brittny for your help and generosity!

Civil War Pension File for John Young Hooper, Part 1

Here is the first part of the Civil War Pension File for John Young Hooper. See my previous post for some information about the file.

By the way, I received these files from the National Archives. It took about two months and about $150. Small price to pay!

Some highlights in this section are on page 40, letter from Charles M. Hooper (John's brother) and page 43, letter from James B. Sly (John's uncle).

John Young Hooper Civil War Pension File Part 1

Civil War Pension File for John Young Hooper, continued

I was surprised to realize that I have no entries on John Young Hooper as I've dug up lots of stuff on him. Since I promised the civil war pension file I have for him to a few folks, I'll put it here in my first post on John Young.

John Young Hooper (the elder) was born in 1841 and died at the age of 50. He served in the Civil War as bugler for the Nebraska Infantry and Calvary. During his service, he suffered a scrotal hernia (google "scrotal hernia" to see how hideously painful this injury must be!) John Young did not report the injury during the war and when he became increasingly ill from the injury after the war, he began the process for trying to secure a pension. When he died, leaving six children under the age of 15, his wife Helen Baldwin continued the fight to gain a pension. Apparently, Helen's application was denied several times. Helen persevered with the appeals and eventually won the widow's pension.

There's a lot of mundane stuff in the file, but there are also some really amazing documents and information in here, too. This is the second part of the pension file.

John Young Hooper civil war pension file Part 2

Horse Ears Eddy!

In my last post, I wondered if there was a connection with Edna Eddy's uncle Theodore Eddy and Mark Twain. Twain (nee Samuel Clemmons) and Theodore were both born the same year; they both grew up in Hannbal Missouri (at the time, circa 1860, population 1100).

Wow, the wonders of Google. Twain wrote of Theodore Eddy in his autobiography. Funny passage! He talks about how Theodore could "work his ears like a horse".

I know a descendent who has ears "like a horse" but I won't say who it is!!

A little about the Eddy family...

Edna Imogene Eddy was born in Hannibal, Missouri in 1877. She married John Young Hooper in 1902; my grandmother, Alice Hooper, was born in 1904. Alice was an only child and my mother, Edna's only granddaughter, has no memory of her.

I recently obtained Edna's death certificate and learned that she died on New Year's day in 1942 at the Highland Park (Chicago area) home of her daughter, Alice. She evidently had traveled from her home in Chicago on December 31st. She saw a doctor on the 31st, and died the next day.

Like everyone else on this side of the family, we have no family information on this line. No family pictures, no stories, no nothing! Dates & places in this post have come from census and other records.

I also learned that Edna's father Edward was born in Hannbal in 1846. Edward's older brother Theodore (did they call him Teddy Eddy?), born in 1836, was the same age as Samuel L. Clemens who also lived in Hannbal. The 1850 census shows 1060 people living in Hannbal. My bet is that the Eddy family was acquainted with one of the most important American writers!

I believe this may be the only photo my family has of John Young Hooper (1879 - 1942). Here he sits next to his standing daughter, my grandmother, Alice Hooper Chapman (1904 - 1970), in a photograph probably taken in the 1920s, probably taken in the Chicago area. Click photo for enlarged view. Don't you love her outfit?

Mary Harris Hooper, Large Wife of Sanford (part 2)

Remember Joseph Smith Harris told us that Mary Harris was a large woman, weighing 220 lbs? Here's a second photo of Mary... well, what do you think? I wish I knew how tall she was!

Here she is, Mary Harris

Undated photo of Mary Harris. How old do you think she is here? Keep in mind she died in 1875 at the age of 64.

Here he is, Sanford A. Hooper

Undated photo of Sanford A. Hooper. Check out that goatee! Does he look how you imagined?

Thank you Ebay and Esnipe!

When I started my Hooper & Harris search in November 2008, my biggest goal was to find photographs of the ancestors. I noted previously that I don't have a single photo pre-1920 of any ancestor on my mother's side.

My research led me to believe that the book "This is Our Town" by Harold Albrecht, sponsored by the Belle Plaine Historical Society, might be a source of information for the Hoopers. Sanford A. Hooper, wife Mary Harris, and their young family moved to Belle Plaine, MN from Geneseo County New York in the 1850s.

This book is hard to find! It came up once on Ebay in January and I didn't bid high enough. So when it came up again last week, I set my Esnipe high enough to win. I won! And I was right! Lots of information on the Hoopers and photos, too!

EWWWW !!! Thanks a lot, John Harris!

Ever since I can remember, the taste of lima beans elicits the gag reflex in me. There is no taste or texture more foul, in my book. One of my most enduring memories from childhood is being forced to eat them at the age of 5. I could not swallow them, so I stuffed my mouth full and ran to the bathroom where I spit them out & flushed. My mother, fast on my heels, saw the whole thing and though I don't remember what happened next, I'm certain I got my butt spanked. But it didn't matter. Next time I didn't eat them and I have never eaten them since. And will never eat them again.

Imagine my horror when I came across this today in Joseph Smith Harris's book "Notes on the ancestry... " . He is speaking here of John Harris (1789-1864), brother to our Campbell Harris.

It runs in the family!

Not the last of the Harris line to work for the post office! From Google Books, this:





This book was published in 1819. By that time Campbell Harris was already in New York so I suppose this was out of date when printed. It seems that Campbell's duties as postmaster were probably tied to his activities at the General Wayne.

Bad news, good news, bad news, good news...

Unfortunately I must admit an error in my earlier research. Bad news! The General Wayne Inn of Merion, Pennsylvania-- with its colorful history of Edgar Allen Poe, ghosts, and murder-- is not a part of our Harris history.

But, good news! My Chester County pal (thanks, Dan!) was able to ascertain the correct location of Campbell Harris' General Wayne Inn, and it was located in Frazer, East Whiteland township.

Now the bad news. Dan reports "This building has been abandoned for years. It has been on the market for years and once someone bought it and was going to convert it into a store front. Nothing ever became of it. I think it is in disrepair by now. "

But here's good news for those of us who live a world away. You can sit on your rump and still SEE the building that Mary Harris grew up in, and the home to Mary's father Campbell Harris and mother Jane Lee!!! Mary was born in 1811 and the family moved to New York in 1817, and it looks like the family lived here during that time. Here it is, and if you click the arrows, you can move around, get different views of the building, and take a tour of the neighborhood.


View Larger Map

More from Joe...

"

(Do you think he would mind me referring to him as Joe???) I don't know how it happened, but I've overlooked this before. Another Joseph Smith Harris history, with lots of additional information on our ancestors. Stephen Harris (1798-1851), Joe's dad, was brother to our Campbell Harris (1781-1853). More later, but the whole book is available for free at Google books.

Here's a great place to spend an hour!

Part of the Joseph Smith Harris collection at Yale includes photographs, several dozen of which are available online here. These photographs are fascinating and you will love them, even if you aren't connected to the Harris family!!!

Harris descendents are the luckiest people in the world!

I'm a newbie at genealogy research. BUT.... I doubt that finds like this often happen for most folks looking into their family's history. And now it has happened a second time! The personal papers belonging to the aforementioned Joseph Smith Harris are held at Yale University (Yale??? Well, that's too bad!)

Here are a couple of lines from the collection's description and I think you will agree that there might be terrific information for Harris descendents in these papers:

The correspondence is arranged chronologically and consists primarily of letters by Harris to his family... Harris's letters for 1848-53, written to his mother and siblings, mention visits to relatives and journeys to and from school.

This collection is open to the public, so I guess there'll be a trip to New Haven in the future.

Homage to Joe

Anyone with a connection to the Hooper/Harris lines needs to pay homage to Joseph Smith Harris (1836-1910). Harris was first cousin to our Mary Harris and nephew to Campbell Harris, and he was the one who so faithfully documented her weight (220 lbs). Hey, that's my great-great-great grandmother you were talking about!

Harris wrote two detailed genealogy histories of the Harris family, both of which have previously been discussed. They are here and here. I am SO grateful to have these detailed, interesting histories of ancestors who-- without these documents-- would be unknown and forgotten forever. Thank you so much, Joseph Smith Harris.

Seeing the detailed works on family history that Harris authored, I assumed he didn't do much with his time, other than work on family genealogy. Well that couldn't be further from the truth! Take a look at his Wikipedia page and you will agree that Harris can be forgiven for his snarky comments about his cousin Mary.

And here's a very brief biography of Harris' professional life:

Joseph S. Harris was a railroad surveyor and topographer, a land surveyor, an astronomer, and a mathematician, during the period 1853 to 1870. He was employed by the North Pennsylvania Railroad, the Kentucky Geological Survey, the U.S. Coast Survey, and the U.S./Canadian Northwest Boundary Survey prior to the Civil War. During the Civil War he advised Admirals Farragut and Porter, and General Butler for the New Orleans campaign. After the war he was a civil and mining engineer for coal mines and railroads in Pennsylvania, later he became an executive officer for numerous railroads, including the Central Railroad of New Jersey.

This passage is from the U.S. Army Military History Institute Carlisle Barracks where a copy of the "Autobiography of Joseph Smith Harris" is held. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that Joe's autobiography is available online or elsewhere.