It All Began Around The Turn Of The Century--1900 That Is!
My father's name was Harold Rockwell Hooper, but he was known all of his life by his childhood nickname, Bill or Billy. He was born at 144 Central Avenue in East Hartford, Connecticut. Over the years, he told me a lot of stories about his childhood, and I would like to commit them to print. I am going with the spellings Daddy gave me when I was writing things down at one point; I make no promise that they are all correct. Daddy was 10 th of the 11 children born to Frank Eugene Hooper (1870 to March 1943) and Edith Mae (Gregory) Hooper (1883 to May 5, 1942). Both of them lived in Canastota, New York, and were married there. At that time, branches of the Hooper family also extended into Poughkeepsie and Salamanca, New York. As with the spellings of towns (and even the middle name “Mae”, which might have been “May”), I am going with Daddy's memory for dates—specifically, the birth dates of the Hooper children of that generation. He was always the keeper of Hooper family ...