HORATIO H. HOOKE, CADET MIDN, USN
Horatio Hooke '78
Horatio Hill Hooke was admitted to the Naval Academy from Illinois on September 26, 1874 at age 17 years 0 months.
Prior to the publication of the Lucky Bag in 1894, most portraits of officers and midshipmen of the Naval Academy were captured in yearly photo albums. The album for 1878 is available in the collections of the Naval Academy's Digital Collections.
Special thank you to historian Kathy Franz for identifying this resource and then extracting several dozen photographs for this site.
Prior to the publication of the Lucky Bag in 1894, most portraits of officers and midshipmen of the Naval Academy were captured in yearly photo albums. The album for 1878 is available in the collections of the Naval Academy's Digital Collections.
Special thank you to historian Kathy Franz for identifying this resource and then extracting several dozen photographs for this site.
Loss
Horatio died of a long illness — over two years — in Manitou, Colorado, on January 2, 1881.
Other Information
From researcher Kathy Franz:
Horatio's father was a lawyer, mother Sarah, and brother Wallace. His father's sister was Emma Hooke, and she is buried with Horatio and his mother in the Evergreen Cemetery.
Horatio's grandfather was Col. Enoch Brown Hook of New Hampshire.
His family settled in Manitou, Colorado, near Colorado Springs; Horatio is buried in Colorado.
There is a photo of him in the (offline) collection of the Naval Academy Library.
Memorial Hall Error
Illness is not a criteria for inclusion in Memorial Hall. Also, Horatio's rank was "Cadet Midshipman," not Ensign as is listed in Memorial Hall.
The "Register of Commissioned and Warrant Officers of the United States Navy and Marine Corps" was published annually from 1815 through at least the 1970s; it provided rank, command or station, and occasionally billet until the beginning of World War II when command/station was no longer included. Scanned copies were reviewed and data entered from the mid-1840s through 1922, when more-frequent Navy Directories were available.
The Navy Directory was a publication that provided information on the command, billet, and rank of every active and retired naval officer. Single editions have been found online from January 1915 and March 1918, and then from three to six editions per year from 1923 through 1940; the final edition is from April 1941.
The entries in both series of documents are sometimes cryptic and confusing. They are often inconsistent, even within an edition, with the name of commands; this is especially true for aviation squadrons in the 1920s and early 1930s.
Alumni listed at the same command may or may not have had significant interactions; they could have shared a stateroom or workspace, stood many hours of watch together… or, especially at the larger commands, they might not have known each other at all. The information provides the opportunity to draw connections that are otherwise invisible, though, and gives a fuller view of the professional experiences of these alumni in Memorial Hall.
July 1878
January 1880
Note
A special thank you to Kathy Franz, a historian who located Horatio's cause of death and photograph.
Horatio is one of 3 members of the Class of 1878 on Virtual Memorial Hall.
The "category" links below lead to lists of related Honorees; use them to explore further the service and sacrifice of alumni in Memorial Hall.
