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From Massachusetts Historical Society Collection Portrait and Landscape Photographs, 1883 Mary Hooper Adams Collection.
This collection consists of three albums of photographs taken by Marian "Clover" Hooper Adams from 1883-1885. These images include formal and informal portraits of U.S. politicians, various members of the Adams and Hooper families, family friends, and portraits taken by others of Marian Hooper Adams. Also included are photographs of Washington, D.C.; Bladensburg, Md.; Old Sweet Springs, Va.; and the Adams family homes in Quincy and Beverly Farms, Massachusetts.
Marian Hooper Adams (MHA) was born in Boston, 13 Sep. 1843, to Robert W. Hooper, an ophthalmologist, and Ellen (Sturgis), a Transcendental poet. Her maternal grandfather was William Sturgis, a prominent merchant and pioneer of the Boston-China trade. Known to friends and family as "Clover," she and her two siblings were raised by her father after her mother died when she was only five. Clover married historian and writer Henry Adams (HA) in 1872, and the couple spent their honeymoon in Europe. They moved to Washington in 1877, where Clover was known for her "salon" and hostess abilities. She took up photography in 1883 and her work was widely admired, although Henry Adams apparently discouraged publication of her photographs.
After her father's death in 1885, Clover suffered from an overwhelming depression, an illness that seemed to plague a number of her family members. In early December of 1885, she took her own life. Henry Adams erected a memorial monument to Clover by Augustus St. Gaudens in Rock Creek Park, Washington, D.C.