Image: Receipt for a Library Company share, 1733.

We continue our monthly “Shareholder Spotlight” series by taking a closer look at Share #1076 and its fifth owner, Lucy Hamilton Jones Hooper (1835-1893).

Shareholders have always been the backbone of the Library Company of Philadelphia. Starting with the first group of fifty tradesmen who formed the library in 1731, shareholders have provided crucial financial support each year for our mission to “pour forth benefits for the common good.”

We keep careful track of who has owned each historic share, and our list of 9,800+ shareholders includes signers of the Declaration and Constitution, merchants, doctors, soldiers, scientists, artists, philanthropists, politicians, and much more.

Share #1076

This share was first issued to William Hollinshead on October 26, 1843.

It passed through two more owners before Robert M. Hooper acquired the share on June 25, 1854.

At the time, Robert was a merchant in Philadelphia. Little more is known of Robert’s involvement with the Library Company, but on February 6, 1862, he transferred the share to his wife Lucy Hamilton Jones Hooper (1835-1893).

Lucy was a writer from a young age, and apparently began writing professionally to help support her family after her husband had suffered a financial setback.[i]

Her poems were first published in Godey’s Lady’s Book magazine, and a small collection of her poems was published in 1864. She dedicated the volume to Library Company Librarian Lloyd P. Smith (1822-1886) and journalist and fellow shareholder Charles G. Leland (1824-1903).

Image: The dedication to her 1864 volume of poems reads, “To Lloyd P. Smith and Charles G. Leland, the author, grateful for the kind encouragement and still kinder censure which they have ever accorded to her literary efforts, dedicates this book.” Lucy Hamilton Hooper, Poems (Philadelphia, 1864).

She also worked with Leland in June 1864 to edit Our Daily Fare, the daily newspaper that chronicled the U.S. Sanitary Commission’s Great Central Fair held in Philadelphia.[ii]

Lucy served as assistant editor of Lippincott’s Magazine starting in 1868, and J. B. Lippincott & Co. published another volume of her poems in 1871.[iii]

Image: Frontispiece from Lucy Hamilton Hooper, Poems (Philadelphia, 1871).

Lucy maintained her Library Company share for eleven years, eventually selling the share to John Holbrook Easby on November 6, 1873. (Lucy’s husband Robert Hooper was named Vice-Consul General to Paris in 1874, and she lived there for the rest of her life. She worked as a Paris correspondent for several American newspapers, published a novel, and wrote a four-act play.)[iv]

The share has been owned by twelve people total in its history.

Not yet a shareholder?

Share #1076 is currently available. We work hard to match potential shareholders with historic shares that match their interests, and we would love to match you with Lucy Hamilton Hooper’s share or another option.

You can become a Library Company shareholder with an initial gift of $500. To learn more, visit our website or reach out to our Development Office at [email protected].

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[i] “Laurel Hill’s Women in the Performing Arts,” The Laurel Hill Cemetery Blog https://laurelhillcemeteryblog.wordpress.com/2020/07/30/laurel-hills-women-in-the-performing-arts/ (accessed December 18, 2025).

[ii] Frances E. Willard and Mary A. Livermore, eds., A Woman of the Century (Buffalo, NY: Charles Wells Moulton, 1893), 392. James Grant Wilson and John Fiske, eds., Appletons’ Cyclopedia of American Biography, volume III, (New York, 1889), 252.

[iii] Wilson and Fiske, 252.

[iv] Willard and Livermore, 392.

Updated 1/15/2026 to correct share number from #1176 to #1076.