The Blithedale Romance

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on July 4, 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts, where his birthplace is now a museum. William Hathorne, who emigrated from England in 1630, was the first of Hawthorne’s ancestors to arrive in the colonies. After arriving, William persecuted Quakers. William’s son John Hathorne was one of the judges who oversaw the Salem Witch Trials. Hawthorne’s father, Nathaniel Hathorne, Sr., was a sea captain who died in 1808 of yellow fever, when Hawthorne was only four years old, in Raymond, Maine.