John Hooker (1816–1901) was an American lawyer, judge, and abolitionist as well as a reformer for women's rights. He married Isabella Beecher Hooker in 1841 and lived in Farmington and Hartford, Connecticut.
With his brother-in-law, Francis Gillette, he purchased 140 acres in 1853, and they established the Hartford neighborhood known as "Nook Farm." It was a community of reformers, politicians, writers and friends; Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, and Charles Dudley Warner, in addition to Gillette and John and Isabella Hooker, were the most famous residents.
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Life and career
In John Hooker's memoir Some Reminiscences of a Long Life, he mentioned that he was the son of Edward Hooker, who was the fifth in direct descent from Thomas Hooker, the first minister of the First Church of Hartford and the founder of Connecticut. John Hooker also experienced the Amistad case first hand in Farmington. His law office was on the second floor of Samuel Deming's store in the 1840s. The office was also next to a room used by Amistad captives. The building was originally on Main Street next to Deming's house, and moved to Mill Lane in the 1930s.
John and Isabella Beecher Hooker raised three children in their home in Nook Farm at the corner of Forest and Hawthorn streets. Under his wife's influence, he was an advocate in the women's rights movement and supported his sister-in-law, Harriet Beecher Stowe, during the initiation of her activist career.