Humorist; newspaper editor; lawyer. Born– June 9, 1815, Wilmington, North Carolina.  Parents– Archibald and Charlotte de Berniere Hooper.  Married– Mary Mildred Brantley, 1842.  Children–two. Read law in his brother’s law office in New Bern, Alabama, 1835-1838; admitted to the bar, 1838; practiced law in in Lafayette and Dadeville.  Editor of the East Alabamian, LaFayette; the Wetumpka Whig; the Alabama Journal, Montgomery; the Chambers County Tribune; and the Montgomery Mail.  Worked as Talladega County census taker for the 1840 census.  Beginning in 1843 published sketches and stories in national periodicals including the Spirit of the Times of New York City.  Published humorous sketches of life in Alabama which became nationally popular and were collected into several books.   Increasingly involved in politics in the 1850s; wrote in favor of secession and the Southern cause.  Served as secretary of the Southern Convention in 1851; secretary of the Confederate Congress, 1861-62.  Died June 7, 1862.

Sources;

American National Biography online.

Bain, Robert, and Flora, Joseph M.  Fifty Southern Writers before 1900.  New York; Greenwood Press, 1987.

Publications;

Some Adventures of Captain Simon Suggs, Late of the Tallapoosa Volunteers… Philadelphia; Carey and Hart, 1845.

A Ride with Old Kit Kuncker, and Other Sketches and Scenes of Alabama. Tuscaloosa; M.D. J. Slade, 1849.

The Widow Rugby’s Husband, a Night at the Ugly Man’s, and Other Tales of Alabama.  Philadelphia; A. Hart, 1851.

Read and Circulate; Proceedings of the Democratic and Anti-Know-Nothing Party in Caucus, or the Guillotine at Work.  Montgomery:  Barret and Wimbish, 1855.

Dog and Gun; A Few Loose Chapters on Shooting. New York; C.M.Saxton & Co., 1856.

Simon Suggs’ Adventures and Travels, Comprising All of the Scenes, Incidents, and Adventures of his Travels… with Widow Rugby’s Husband and Twenty-six other Humorous Tales of  Alabama.      Philadelphia:  T. B. Peterson, 1856. 

Papers;

A collection of Hooper Family papers is held in the Southern History Collection at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.