Johnson J. Hooper
Johnson Jones Hooper (June 9, 1815– June 7, 1862) was an American humorist, born in Wilmington, North Carolina. He moved to Dadeville, Alabama where he edited a newspaper and practiced law. All told, he founded or edited six different publications during his career.
His first published work was "Taking the Census in Alabama" in 1843. In 1844 he began publishing short stories about the rascally Simon Suggs, which he collected and published in 1845 as the Adventures of Captain Simon Suggs; broadly, cruelly, and uncouthly humorous, yet one of the raciest books of its time, descriptive of a gambling sharp of the Southwest in the "flush times." The work made him nationally known, and may have inspired one or more characters of Mark Twain's. His Widow Rugby's Husband and Other Tales of Alabama (1851) was less successful.[1]
Intensely political, he was appointed secretary of the Provisional Confederate Congress in 1861. He moved with the Confederate government to Richmond, where he died from the effects of tuberculosis in 1862 (not 1861, as indicated on the state historical marker) and was buried in that city's Shockoe Hill Cemetery.
He married Mary Mildred Brantley in 1845. They had two sons.
Notes [edit]
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Gilman, D. C.; Thurston, H. T.; Moore, F., eds. (1905). "article name needed". New International Encyclopedia (1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead.
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