A letter from Major General Joseph Hooker, a member of the Society of California Pioneers, to Secretary Francis D. Clark expressing his support for a celebration of the 27th aniversary of California's admission to the United States.

Major General Joseph Hooker was a career U.S. military officer who served as a major general and commander of the Union Army of the Potomac during the Civil War, as well as a member of the Society of California Pioneers from 1853 on. Joseph Hooker was born in Hadley, Massachusetts, on November 13, 1814, and studied at Hopkins Academy in Massachusetts, then the United States Military Academy at West Point. He joined the Society in September of 1853. In 1865, Hooker was transferred to command of the Department of the East, which encompassed New York, New Jersey and New England. In September, 1865, he married Olivia Groesbeck, sister of an Ohio congressman, but their marriage ended three years later when she died in 1868. That same year, Hooker retired from the military. His own health had declined significantly in the years after the war, and two strokes eventually left him partially paralyzed. He died in Garden City, Long Island, in 1879 at the age of 64.

1 folder One letter, handwritten in ink, by General Joseph Hooker One sheet of lined paper, letter written in ink