William Jackson Hooker was born in St. Saviour's parish, Norwich, on July 6, 1785. He was the younger of two sons, the only children of Joseph and Lydia Hooker, of that city. His father was a native of Exeter, the home of many generations of the Devonshire Hookers, where he had been a confidential clerk in the house of Baring Brothers, wool-staplers, with whose family his was distantly connected. From Exeter he went to Norwich, and into business there, where he had a collection of ‘Succulents,’ the cultivation of which class of plants was a favourite pursuit of many of his fellow citizens. He was mainly a self-educated man, and a fair German scholar. My father's mother was a daughter of James Vincent, Esq., of Norwich, a worsted manufacturer, grandfather of George Vincent, one of the best of the Norwich School of artists, and whose works are now much sought for. Thus my father presumably derived his love of plants from his father's side, and his artistic powers from his mother's.

Of my father's early childhood I know no more than that he went to the Norwich Grammar School, under the then well-known pedagogue, Dr. Foster, but the records of that school having been destroyed it is impossible to say what progress he made there; at home he devoted himself to entomology, drawing, and reading books of travel and natural history.