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             Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born Nathaniel Hathorne on July 4, 1804 at 27 Hardy Street in Salem. The house was later moved to Turner Street, where it is now a museum on the grounds of  The House of the Seven Gables. Nathaniel added the “w” to his name when he was in his twenties when he learned that one of his ancestors was John Hathorne, one of the judges who took part in the Salem Witch Trials.

   Hawthorne’s father, also Nathaniel, was a captain in the U.S. Navy. He died when his son was only four years old.

   Hawthorne went to Bowdoin College in Maine, where he became friends with Longfellow and future U.S. president Franklin Pierce. He later formed friendships with other notables including Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.

    In 1838 Nathaniel became engaged to  Sophia Peabody of Salem and found a job in Boston as weigher at the Boston Custom House. In 1841 he and Sophia joined the transcendentalist utopian community at Brook Farm just outside of Boston. He soon found that hard physical labor (farming) is not conducive to intellectual productivity. Within a year he and Sophia left Brook Farm. One byproduct of the experience, however, was his novel The Blithdale Romance, which was inspired by his time at the experimental community. Nathaniel and Sophia married in 1842, and settled in Concord, Massachusetts.

    In 1846, Hawthorne was appointed surveyor at the Salem Custom House. He and Sophia moved to 18 Chestnut Street in Salem. It is at the Salem Custom House, in his down time, that he would write, no doubt working on his future novel The Scarlet Letter. Much of The Scarlet Letter, however, was written after he was fired from his position at the Custom House in 1849. His job was subject to politics, and when the new Whig administration came to Washington, Hawthorne, a Democrat, was vulnerable. In 1848, Hawthorne takes on the additional job of managing the Salem Lyceum. He invites Thoreau and Emerson to lecture there. In 1850, he moves his family to Lenox, Massachusetts. He soon decides to buy a home in Concord. Called The Wayside, it is the only home Hawthorne ever owned.

    Hawthorne’s first written efforts were not well received, and it was not until the publication of The Scarlet Letter in 1850 that he began to come into his own as a writer. He quickly followed this with The House of the Seven Gables in 1851. In that same year, Herman Melville, another friend, dedicated his book Moby Dick to Hawthorne.

   In 1853, President Pierce, his friend, appoints Hawthorne consul to Liverpool, England. He remained in Europe for seven years.

   Hawthorne, by nature, liked to keep to himself. At times he was a brooder, who questioned what he was doing as writer. He was convinced that his Puritan ancestors would condemn him as “a writer of storybooks.” They would not consider writing to be an honorable profession, and they would consider him to be a “degenerate fellow.”

    When Hawthorne returned to Salem to take the job at the Custom House, he felt that Salem was suffocating him. He had to get out. It was probably not an easy decision, for the Hawthornes (and Hathornes) went way back in Salem. The first Hathorne to come to Salem was William, who came from Boston in 1630. When William arrived in Salem it was just a small settlement of rude dwellings with thatched roofs. He met Salem founder Roger Conant and eventually became a magistrate of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He was in some ways like his descendant John Hathorne in that he was a stern judge, sometime ordering the whipping of Quakers. It is not difficult to see why Nathaniel, the descendant of both of these men, wanted to dissociate himself from them by adding the “w” to his name.

    Nathaniel and Sophia had three children: Una, Julian and Rose. Sophia was a painter and illustrator. She was also a writer, having written a number of published articles. Sophia’s sister Elizabeth was the founder of the kindergarten movement in America, and her sister Mary was married to educator Horace Mann.

    Nathaniel Hawthorne died May 19, 1864. □