- Author. He was a 19th century American novelist, who focused, by pulling from his prominent ancestor's lives, on the part religious guilt played in Colonial New England. His most famous work was "The Scarlet Letter," which was published in 1850. It sold over 2,500 copies in the first two weeks after publication. Born the son of a sea captain, his father died of yellow fever when Hawthorne was age four. His writing career started while attending Bowdoin College in Maine from 1821 to 1824. A classmate was author Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He developed the genre of literature called "Dark Romanticism," which is steeped in complex emotions and expressions of individualism. Besides "The Scarlet Letter," he wrote "Young Goodman Brown" in 1835, "Ethan Brand" in 1850, "The House of the Seven Gables" in 1851, and "The Blithedale Romance" in 1852. His short story collections included "Twice-Told Tales," a two-volume collection with the first published in 1836 and the second 1842; "Mosses From An Old Manse" in 1846, and "Tanglewood Tales," a collection of famous ancient Greek myths published in 1853 especially for children. Separating himself from his Puritan ancestors, Hawthorne added the "W" to his surname of "Hathorne". Although he believed in God and recognized evil, he was not a member of any formal religious group. One of his ancestors was the presiding judge at the Salem witch trials in 1692. He became a charter member in 1841 of Brook Farm near Boston, which was a transcendentalist agricultural collective founded by a Unitarian minister, but he soon became disillusioned with the hard work of farm life. He lived most of his life in New England, where he lived near authors Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau and later Louisa May Alcott. He also had a chance meeting in 1850 with author Herman Melville and the two exchanged letters for a time, Melville dedicated his masterpiece novel, "Moby-Dick," to Hawthorne. In 1842 he married Sophia Amelia Peabody and the couple had two daughters and a son. After his close friend, Franklin Pierce became the 14th United States President, Hawthorne accepted a four-year position as United States consul in Liverpool, England and during this time abroad, traveled to France and Italy. Some years later, he and Pierce traveled to New Hampshire's White Mountains for a holiday. The elderly Hawthorne's health had declined, speculating from stomach cancer. Stopping at a hotel for the night, it was Pierce that discovered in the morning that Hawthorne had died during the night in his sleep. Seven years after his death, his wife, Sophia, died while in England and was buried in London's Kensal Green Cemetery along with their daughter Una, who died in 1877. In 2006, the bodies of Hawthorne's wife and daughter were unearthed from their English resting place and reinterred next to his side in Concord's Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. His daughter, Rose Hawthorne married poet, George Lathrop in 1871. After the death of their five-year-old son, Francis, she and her husband converted to Roman Catholic in March of 1881. Her husband died from kidney disease and heart disease at age 46. Following this, she devoted her life to nursing cancer patients, becoming a nun, with the name of Mother Mary Alphonsa Lathrop. She co-founded in 1900 the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne to continue care to impoverished cancer patients. She was nominated for sainthood in 2003
Bio by: Linda Davis [3]
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The Duttons of New England
1804 - 1864 (59 years)
Has 12 ancestors but no descendants in this family tree.
[1] 
HATHORNE, Capt Nathaniel
