vital records sources

see this article on the English origins of this family.

Francis was likely the captain of a shallop owned by a company of men headed by Moses Maverick of Marblehead. On 5 September 1662, judgement was made against the captain of a Charlestown ship that ran into and sunk the shallop.1 He was presented at court for not packing a barrel of mackerel properly on 27 June 1666.2 This is the last record of him in Massachusetts Bay, and there isn't a burial record for him in indexes of English parish records. Widow Julian Hooper of East Coker, buried on 31 April 1694, was very likely his wife. There's no evidence that Francis and Julian lived in Massachusetts Bay, only his mercantile fishing activity. East Coker isn't very near the English coast, and I don't know if seamen commuted to and from inland towns to seaports inbetween fishing voyages. There was an active fishing trade between English "West Country" ports and Massachusetts Bay at this time. It's possible, given that there are no other children on record born after 1646, that Francis left the family, became a seaman, lived in Marblehead and an English port town between voyages, and at some point went back for William. It may also explain why he doesn't have a burial record in East Coker.

     The social origins of fishermen are not easy to trace. Their names surface without warning in merchants' accounts and frequently disappear just as quickly. The best way to tackle the problem is to establish, first, who they were not. Hardly any - roughly eleven percent of those who can be identified - were part of the Great Migration of the 1630's, nor did the group contain any blacks or Indian servants or more than a handful of indentured Englishmen. Judging from surnames and the observations of contemporaries, it appears, rather, thatthe great majority of fishermen were drawn from a pool of British maritime laborers who made their living on the North Atlantic and stopped in at the ports of Essex County, not for reasons of political or religious persecution, but to fish. "Marblehead," noted its inhabitants in a petition of 1667, "hath been a place of fishing for many yeares past, on which Accot divers persons from England, Newfound Land, and other places have [reso]rted thither, many of them persons undesirable and of noe estates, butt rather indebted." Some chose to stay on and settle; others left at the end of the season; but almost all were, by Puritan standards, outsiders.3

children of Francis Hooper and Julian Holway:4

William, bap. 11 March 1642/43, bur. 22 March 1642/43
John, bap. 11 March 1642/43
William, bap. 4 September 1644
Mary, bap. October 1646

vital records sources: His baptism and marriage come from the East Coker parish register (see note 4). The baptism record says "ffranciscus Edwardi Hoop filius baptizatus fuit Novebrus xx deie." "Hoop" was an alternate spelling used at this time, and doesn't signify a different family. The marriage record says "ffrancis Hooper & Julian Holway" (not Holwaye or Holloway). There are other Holways in this register spelled as such, although the now more standard "Holloway" spelling probably has the same origin. The earliest version of his death record I've found is in "Massachusetts, U.S., Town and Vital Records, 1620-1988," ancestry.com database online, "Beverly, Family Vital Records,", image 117 of transcribed mss page 100. It's been transcribed and referred to in publications many times since.

1. Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County, Massachusetts , vol. 3 (Salem, MA: Essex Institute, 1913), 288.
2. Ibid, 387.
3. Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, vol. 63 (Colonial Society of Massachusetts: Boston, 1984), 101.
4. The baptisms and burial records are from the parish register of East Coker, Somerset, England, see "Somerset, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials, 1531-1812," ancestry.com database online (Ancestry.com Operations, Inc.: Provo, UT, 2016).