His father, Robert Hooper, was a shipping merchant and later served as president of the Grand Bank of Marblehead.

[1] After a common school education, Hooper traveled aboard his father's shipping vessels as supercargo.

The firm acquired additional partners in 1851 when Appleton joined the Massachusetts congressional delegation.

He turned down reelection to the 44th Congress and died less than a month before completion of his final term.

Hooper was briefly the father-in-law of Charles Sumner, a powerful senator from Massachusetts.