John Hooker (abolitionist)

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.

John and Isabella Beecher Hooker raised three children in their home in Nook Farm at the corner of Forest and Hawthorn streets.

[5] 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.

This financial arrangement helped Pennington feel safe in the North and he returned from Europe, where he had fled, to continue his career as a minister.

[8] Hooker served as a Congregational deacon and also accepted the beliefs of the Spiritualism movement, whose members thought it was possible to communicate with spirits of the dead.