Hooker Family House

Albert F. Colburn commissioned George P. Loveland & Co to construct this high-style Queen Anne house in 1891 on land subdivided from the estate of Deacon Oliver Hardy. Colburn was the proprietor and treasurer of Wait’s River Paper Company, organized in 1886. In 1894, the house was purchased by Joseph E. Sleeper, section foreman for the Passumpsic Railroad. Michigan’s 29th governor Albert E. Sleeper, a Bradford Academy graduate, sold the property in 1934 to Burnside H. Hooker. A descendant of the “Father of Connecticut” Rev. Thomas Hooker, Hooker started railroading at age 16 as a brakeman, becoming an agent at Orleans and Ryegate before moving to Bradford in 1914 to act as Boston & Maine R.R. station master. B.H. Hooker retired in 1955.