Nathaniel Hawthorne Grave

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Nathaniel Hawthorne Grave
42.465022°N 71.342494°W

6/24/2012 4:00:00 PM

Author’s Ridge: Sleepy Hollow Cemetery

Nathaniel Hawthorne was a descendent of Judge John Hathorne who was known for presiding over the Salem witch trials. The stigma attached to these scandalous events prompted Nathanial Hawthorne to add the letter “w” to his name in order to further remove himself from any connection with the judge. Hawthorne was noted for his short stories as well as novels and the biography of Franklin Pierce, who was a personal friend of Hawthorn’s. They met at a stage stop on Hawthorn’s way to Bowdoin College years before Pierce became president. Among his most renowned works are The Scarlet Letter, The House of Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, and The Marble Faun.

Hawthorne attended Bowdoin College from 1821 to 1825 and became a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Before his writing career became a reliable source of income he worked at the Boston Custom House. With the sole intention of saving money on lodging he joined the transcendentalist movement at Brook Farm. By 1842, he was earning enough as a writer to marry his fiancée of four years, Sophia Peabody, and move to Concord. Eventually they bought Amos Bronson Alcott’s (Louisa May Alcott’s father) home and named it The Wayside.
The Hawthornes were extremely shy and embraced a life style of relative seclusion. They had three children. Their daughter Una was born in 1844 followed by the birth of their son Julian in 1846, and finally their youngest child, a daughter named Rose, born in 1851.

Upon Franklin Pierce’s election as president, Hawthorn was appointed as the United States Consul of Liverpool in 1853. This lucrative position was terminated in 1857 at the end of Pierce’s presidency, but the Hawthorne family remained in Europe traveling through Italy and France. They returned to Wayside in 1860.

The onset of the Civil War created much personal turmoil for Hawthorne and greatly interfered with his writing. Thus he, along with publisher William D. Ticknor, embarked on a trip to Washington D.C to gain more insight into the ramifications and business of war. There he met Major General George B. McClellan and President Abraham Lincoln. These meetings inspired his essay written in 1862, Chiefly About War Matters.

Stomach problems plagued Hawthorn in his final days. He took what he thought might be a recuperative trip to the White Mountains with Franklin Peirce, but Nathanial died in his sleep while on the trip. Hawthorne’s pallbearers were Longfellow, Emerson, Holmes, Alcott, James Thomas Fields, and Edwin Percy Whipple.