Anent The Death Of Fred Hooper

ANENT THE DEATH OF FRED HOOPER

Martin Seabolt Becomes Reminiscent

TELLS INTERESTING TALES

About Companionship With Him in Old Days--Some Sixty Year Old History

"Every dad was a good day when Fred Hooper was a boy and we were boys with him," said Martin Seabolt, the shocking death of an old companion recalling times long since past.

"There were the Jones boys of Lower Town, Granville Morrey, Ed Kellogg, Fred and Thomas and Charlie Hooper, and us Seabolt boys, all as thick as peas in a pod, in for all kinds of good times and nobody knew how good a time we were having. John Kelley's tailor shop, in lower town, was our headquarters. But it wasn't lower town then. Sixty years ago it was "the village" and the popular part of Ann Arbor. It had its president, Dr. Pratt, and the part of Ann Arbor which the University built up and only a mayor. In the "village" was the postoffice, a tannery, a turning shop, Robert O'Neil's grocery store and saloon, Peter Carey's saloon on the corner, Fred Rouff's brewery within a stone's throw of Hooper's, where now the beautiful lawn about the Michigan Central gives you no suspicion of what once stood there. But Hooper's is never to be forgotten. Built of stucco brick, it faced Fuller street and was on a direct line with the Michigan Central a few rods east of where the depot now stands. Before it had been bought by Fred Hooper's father for a brewery it was used as a storehouse by William St. Clair, who owned a flouring mill and built and stored barrels there. But it was in the days of Hooper senior and junior that the boys held gatherings at the back door that 'dad' knew nothing about. There was a good cellar there and the best ale I ever drank, said one of the 'boys' who hasn't tasted tea for two and sixty years. Hooper's Scotch ale was nowhere to be beat, so many a man in Ann Arbor will tell you today, after years of much tasting. Hooper, Sr., was all for business and when the war broke out was shrewd enough to buy up barley. Thus he made his fortune and the fortune of his son. It was not until lager set up a rivalry with old-fashioned ale that Hooper, Jr., sold out his brewery in the day of its prosperity to Charles Chapin and T. F. Hill and Fred Hooper left Ann Arbor with $60,000 and Chapin and Hill were left to fall. The old cellar stood for some time after the brewery had been torn down, but no brick remains above another to tell where it had been. But those were good old times when we were all in with the Hooper boys, when Fred ran his fast horses and drove 'Lady Hooper' up State street, where she stumbled and brok her neck. Aye those were good times."