On April 28, 1779, a man in Easton, Pennsylvania, sat down to write to a friend. He had an army to supply, with wheat to buy, wagons to gather, and soldiers who could not wait. But the line that survives is about fish. “Mrs. Hooper,” he wrote, “has been collecting Shad for two weeks.” It is a small, domestic detail. It tells you this was not a man passing through. He was Colonel Robert Lettis Hooper Jr.. The house where he lived and worked still stands at 501 Fifth and Northampton Streets and it is the oldest house within Easton’s city limits.
It dates to 1761, only nine years after Easton was laid out. City records name its first resident as Captain Alexander Petterson, a leading militia officer during the Yankee-Pennamite Wars, the long fight over land claims in the Wyoming Valley.
Hooper came later. Before the war, he worked as a surveyor, made two trips to Fort Pitt, and built his fortune as a land speculator, according to Charles Henry Hart’s 1912 biography. By 1775, he had settled near Saucon Creek, south of Bethlehem. That August, he wrote that the Revolution was “a glorious cause, which must stimulate the Breast of every honest, virtuous American.” He backed it with his talents and his money, with no guarantee of victory.
Hooper became a deputy quartermaster general of the Continental Army, with the rank of colonel. His district covered Northampton, Bucks, Berks, and Philadelphia counties, plus Sussex County in New Jersey. His job was supply, and supply is never glamorous.
From the house on the northwest corner of Northampton and Fifth Streets, he bought barrels of wheat, sides of beef, and shoes. A large stone building behind the house served as a warehouse. The grounds became a depot for wagons and teams, and later a billet for troops. Over several years, he spent vast sums, including his own, on shipments of thousands of barrels of wheat.
The work made enemies. Hooper was accused of requisitioning wagons and teams from patriots while sparing Tories. Congress investigated, and the charges proved unfounded.
In 1780, Congress reorganized the Quartermaster’s Department, and Hooper’s tenure ended. He moved back to New Jersey, served as a judge in Hunterdon County, and later became vice president of the state. He died on July 30, 1797, at Belleville, his estate near Trenton.
The house outlived him by more than two centuries. It was a butcher shop by 1885 and a drugstore by 1927. It has stood unoccupied since the 1970s, and its interior was gutted.
The Hooper House is one of just five surviving buildings from Easton’s colonial period. It is a contributing property to the Easton Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places on May 6, 1983. That matters because the district’s buildings were mostly built between 1830 and 1910. The Hooper House is a rare survivor from the age of wagons.
It also tells a story that battlefields cannot. Armies fight on food, shoes, and transport, and someone has to organize them. Here, Easton served as a supply depot for the Continental Army, and this house is where that work was done.
You can see the Hooper House today at Fifth and Northampton Streets. The city has deemed it blighted since 2012, but its future is improving. In June 2026, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission awarded a $100,000 Keystone Historic Preservation Grant toward its rehabilitation, timed for America’s 250th anniversary. Stand on that corner, and you are looking at a rare Easton building where the Revolution was supplied.
Information for this episode was provided by the City of Easton, the Morning Call, LehighValleyNews.com, Lehigh Valley Public Media, the National Register of Historic Places, the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, the Society of the Cincinnati in the State of New Jersey, and lehighvalleylive.com.
