George Hooper (c.1744–1821) was a Wilmington, N.C., merchant. Though a brother of the Declaration of Independence signer William Hooper, he was suspected during the Revolutionary War of being a Loyalist, and he moved for a time to Charleston, South Carolina. However, his connections allowed him to be restored to citizenship, and he became the first president of the Bank of Cape Fear, which was chartered in 1804. Hooper had been one of the commissioners appointed by North Carolina to supervise the navigation at Cape Fear, and when the federal government took over construction of the lighthouse in 1792 he was employed to supervise. He was relieved of his lighthouse duties in July 1795, when the supervision was transferred to the collector at Wilmington (see Tench Coxe to Hooper, 15 July 1795, DNA: RG 42, Lighthouse Letters). In Coxe’s letter to Wolcott of 29 Dec. 1795, Coxe noted that Hooper had entered a claim for $500. Coxe then explained his estimate that an appropriate settlement would fall between $250 and $400. Coxe mentioned in his letter of 22 March that Congressman William Barry Grove had presented Hooper’s claim, but Coxe concluded that $250 was a fair settlement (DNA: RG 42, Lighthouse Letters).

2. GW approved this sum (Cox to Grove, 28 March, DNA: RG 42, Lighthouse Letters).