Hooper-Parker House (1761)
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.
You may contact me if you would like a correct history of the early ownership of 181 Washington Street.
The facts above are derived from the book The Marblehead Hoopers, by Dorothy Miles, published in 1999, supplemented by the information contained in the links embedded in the article. If you have more accurate information about the early history of the house, please share it with us.
The house was built no earlier than 1769 by Robert Hooper (1741-1814), then a shoreman (fishing business manager). He soon became a shipping merchant. He bought the lot from the heirs of Samuel King, not from an Ingalls. The house was built new in 1769 or 1770; Robert’s father, Nathaniel, had a house on now-Tucker Street and never had a house here. After Robert’s death in 1814 the house descended in the name of Hooper until 1880; it contains a few relics of the first owner. My father bought the place in 1968, when it was about 200 years old, and it is still in our family.