author
William Francis Hooker
1856–1938
A frontier freighter turned memoirist, he wrote vivid first-hand accounts of wagon travel, frontier towns, and the rough everyday life of the American West. His books draw on years spent hauling supplies across the plains and later work as a newspaper man and western storyteller.
1 Audiobook
The Prairie Schooner
by William Francis Hooker
About the author
Born in Wisconsin on May 17, 1856, William Francis Hooker went west as a teenager and began working as a bullwhacker in 1874, driving ox-drawn freight wagons to army posts and Native American reservations. Those years on the plains became the foundation of the stories and recollections he later published.
Hooker is best known for books such as The Prairie Schooner and The Bullwhacker, which look back on frontier travel and settlement from the perspective of someone who had lived it. His writing is valued for its direct, experience-based picture of the early West rather than a romantic legend built from a distance.
Archival and memorial records also describe him as a newspaper man as well as an author of western books. He died in 1938, leaving behind memoir-like accounts that help preserve the working life, danger, and movement of the old overland frontier.