Marian Hooper Adams - Early Life

Early Life

She was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the third and youngest child of Robert William Hooper (1810 - April 15, 1885) and Ellen H. Sturgis (1812-November 3, 1848). Her siblings were Ellen Sturgis "Nella" Hooper (1838–1887), who married professor Ephraim Whitman Gurney (1829–1886); and Edward William "Ned" Hooper (1839–1901). The Hooper family was wealthy and prominent. Clover's birthplace and childhood home in Boston, was at 114 Beacon Street, Beacon Hill. When she was five-years-old, her mother, a Transcendentalist poet, died and she became very close to her physician father. She was privately educated at a girls school in Cambridge, which was run by Elizabeth and Louis Agassiz.

Clover Hooper volunteered for the Sanitary Commission during the Civil War. She defied convention by insisting on watching the review of Sherman's and Grant's armies in 1865. In 1866, she traveled abroad, where she is said to have met fellow Bostonian Henry Adams in London. She and her father were living at their home in Beverly, Massachusetts, in July 1870.

On June 27, 1872, she and Henry Adams were married in Boston, and spent their honeymoon in Europe. Upon their return, he taught at Harvard and their home at 91 Marlborough Street, Boston, became a gathering place for a lively circle of intellectuals. In 1877, they moved to Washington, D.C., where their home on Lafayette Square, across from the White House, became a popular place for socializing.

Clover remained close to her father, writing him regularly. In June 1880, Dr. Hooper was living at his household on Beacon Street in Boston. Her gossipy letters to her father, other family members, and friends, reveal her to be a gifted reporter and provide an insightful view of the Washington and politics of the day, while the ones she wrote from Europe are not ordinary travel letters, but shrewd reflections on character and society, revealing a critical and sprightly mind.

From her reports written in letters, it was widely speculated that it was actually Clover Hooper Adams who was the "anonymous" author of Democracy: An American Novel (1880), which was not credited to her husband until 43 years later.