NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, 1804-1864
[Illustration: NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE]
ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS.--William Hathorne, the ancestor of America's
greatest prose writer, sailed at the age of twenty-three from England on
the ship _Arbella_ with John Winthrop (p. 30), and finally settled at
Salem, Massachusetts. He brought with him a copy of Sir Philip Sidney's
_Arcadia_, a very unusual book for the library of a New England Puritan.
[Illustration: HAWTHORNES BIRTHPLACE, SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS]
John Hathorne, a son of the first settler, was a judge of the poor
creatures who were put to death as witches at Salem in 1692. The great
romance writer says that this ancestor "made himself so conspicuous in the
martyrdom of the witches, that their blood may fairly be said to have left
a stain upon him. ...I, the present writer, as their representative, hereby
take shame upon myself for their sakes, and pray that any curse incurred by
them--as I have heard, and as the dreary and unprosperous condition of the
race, for many a long year back, would argue to exist--may be now and
henceforth removed." Tradition says that the husband of one of the tortured
victims appealed to God to avenge her sufferings and murder.
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