William Hooper

William Hooper was born in 1742 in Boston, studied at Harvard, and moved to North Carolina, where he became a lawyer in Wilmington. He sat in the provincial congress and in the Continental Congress, but he was absent from Philadelphia during the early July votes on independence. He returned in time to sign the engrossed Declaration on or after 2 August. During the war he and his family were forced to move as the fighting reached the Carolina coast, and his property suffered. After independence he was more conservative than many former colleagues: he defended some Loyalists in the courts and was criticized for it. He died in 1790, still in middle age. Hooper's record is mixed in a useful way for students: he accepted the risk of signing, then tried, not always popularly, to restore the rule of law once the fighting had passed.

See also: Signers of the Declaration · Joseph Hewes · John Penn