Marian Osgood Hooker (1875-1968)

Dr. Marian Osgood Hooker was born in San Francisco in 1875 to Katharine Putnam Hooker, the niece of famous geologist Josiah Dwight Whitney, and John Daggett Hooker, a direct descendent of Connecticut’s founder Thomas Hooker. The family moved to Los Angeles in 1886 and John Hooker established a successful steel pipe manufacturer. Marian attended the prestigious Marlborough School in Los Angeles where she studied art history under school founder Mary Caswell. In 1896, two years after graduation, Marian and her mother embarked on their first of five trips abroad. She meticulously documented her adventures in Gibraltar, Spain, Tangier, Italy, Greece, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Amsterdam, and England in a scrapbook. In 1899 and 1903, she and Katharine returned to Italy. In 1913-1914, they travelled to Constantinople, England, Ireland, Egypt, and Italy. In 1922, they made their final trip abroad to the Italian province of Apulia. In 1910, Marian earned a degree in medicine from the University of California, Berkeley. She co-authored several scientific papers with Dr. Martin Fischer during her stay at the University of Cincinnati and in later years. In 1912, she returned to the west coast to become Assistant Medical Examiner at the University of California. She was a member of the San Francisco Women’s Club, the San Francisco Women’s Athletic Club, the Women’s Club of Santa Barbara, the Sierra Club, the California Historical Society, and others. Marian died in 1968.

The Hooker Collection consists primarily of 23 photograph albums recording Hooker’s travels in Europe and her home state of California. Other documentation includes a folder of publisher’s proof prints from her book Farmhouses and Small Provincial Buildings in Southern Italy, an index of her travel photos, an album of portraits, three albums of negatives (some of travel), and a scrapbook. The bulk of the collection documents the architecture, people, and landscape of the places Hooker and her mother, Katherine Putnam Hooker, travelled during their five trips abroad between 1896 and 1923.