Monthly Archives: January 2011

The Georgian-style mansion at 183 Washington Street, across from Abbot Hall in Marblehead, was built around 1740. It has a connection to the Hooper family through Susannah Hooper, daughter of Robert and Mary Glover Hooper. Susannah resided in the house after her marriage to Captain Henry Gallison Gray in 1835. Gray was a shipmaster and later a member of the Massachusetts Senate. The house, traditionally referred to as the Gray Manor, is currently subdivided into multiple apartments.

Nathaniel Hooper, successful Marblehead merchant, built a house that was later inherited, at his death in 1760, by his eldest son Robert. In 1761, Robert married Mary (Polly) Ingalls, his next door neighbor. Purchasing the adjacent plot of land from his father-in-law, Robert Hooper expanded his father’s small home into a much larger Georgian-style mansion, known today as the Hooper-Parker House and located at 181 Washington Street. After Robert’s death in 1815, his oldest son, also named Robert, inherited the house and lived there with his wife, Mary Glover, daughter of Capt. John Glover. Mary Glover Hooper was famed as a hostess, entertaining such guests as George Washington and General Lafayette. After Robert’s death in 1843, the house passed to his brother Henry and was later sold to merchant Robert Bridge, who sold it to Rev. Robert B. Parker, Rector of St. Michael’s Episcopal Church from 1922 to 1925. Rev. Parker’s wife Sarah left the house to the SPNEA, which eventually sold the house to a private owner in 1960.

This week, we’ll be looking at some mansions in Marblehead built by members of the wealthy Hooper family. The oldest section of the King Hooper Mansion, at 8 Hooper Street, dates to 1728 and was built by Greenfield Hooper, a candle maker. The front section, with its elegant Georgian facade, was erected in 1745 by his son, Robert Hooper. As described in The Loyalists of Massachusetts and the Other Side of the American Revolution (1910), by James H. Stark:

Robert Hooper, known as “King Hooper,” was born at Marblehead, June 26, 1709, son of the aforesaid Greenfield Hooper. He was married four times. Was a merchant who rose from poverty to apparently inexhaustible wealth, engrossing for years a large part of the foreign fishing business of Marblehead, which was very extensive about the year 1760. For awhile he purchased all the fish brought into that port, sent it to Bilboa and other parts of Spain and received gold and silver in return, with which he purchased goods in England. He owned lands in Marblehead, Salem, Danvers, and an extensive tract at Lyndeborough, N. H.. and elsewhere. He had a large and elegant house at Marblehead, and also a mansion at Danvers, where he did “royal” entertaining, rode in a chariot like a prince, and was ever after known as “King Hooper.” He was one of the wealthiest and most benevolent men in the colony.

Robert Hooper was also called “King” by the local sailors for his fairness and integrity. In 1819, the mansion was traded to Jason Chamberlain for the schooner Economy. Chamberlain’s heirs owned the house until 1888, using the front room as a dry goods store. It was next owned by the YMCA and then used as a tea room and an antique shop. Since 1938, the house has been owned by the Marblehead Arts Association. The King Hooper Mansion now hosts art exhibitions and can be rented for events.