Rev250Mhd: The General & the King

King Hooper’s Summer House in Danvers that Hosted British General Gage in Summer 1774

Sunday, May 19th • 2:00pm

The King Hooper Mansion’s ballroom
Marblehead Arts Association | 8 Hooper Street, Marblehead

For national architecture preservation month in May, an illustrated talk at the King Hooper Mansion will show and talk about “King” Hooper’s opulent summer house in then-rural Danvers, which was even more beautiful than his house in Marblehead, inside and out. Still privately owned, but moved to Washington DC in 1934, it is now famous as Washington’s second-oldest house.

A major employer in Marblehead for half a century, Hooper would remain loyal to his king throughout his long and prosperous but then anguished (though later celebrated) life. But in the summer of 1774, exactly 250 years ago, King Hooper angered many by offering his summer house as a residence for Britain’s new military governor of Massachusetts when the royal government moved from Boston to Salem.

In the talk, you’ll see inside that house, and you’ll meet that British governor and his fashion-plate American wife, as well as three of Hooper’s four wives (the first had died after only a year or so of marriage), including Ruth Swett, his second wife and partner for 28 years, and the mother of all eleven of the Hoopers’ children. Their stories will be told in more detail at the Hooper Mansion in September.

The talks are presented by social and architectural historian Judy Anderson as part of “Rev250Mhd” ––Marblehead’s multi-year commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution.