The Birthplace of Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on July 4, 1804, in a Georgian-style house near this spot that had been built between 1745 and 1750 for blacksmith Jonathan Phelps. In 1772, Phelps sold the two-and-a-half-story house to his son-in-law Daniel Hathorne for £433. During the American Revolution, Daniel Hathorne commanded the privateer schooner Fair American and became a folk hero for his exploits. His grandson Nathaniel Hathorne Jr. was born there while his father, Nathaniel Hathorne Sr., was at Java. Nathaniel Hathorne Sr., born in the house in 1775, had traveled in the 1790s and early 1800s as a sailor and captain to ports including Calcutta, Batavia, Manila, and Canton, and had married Elizabeth Clarke Manning in 1801. Because the house was crowded with relatives, the couple lived in an upper-floor room. When Nathaniel was three, his father died of fever in Suriname, and lack of money forced the family to move to Elizabeth Clarke Manning's family home on Herbert Street. After the death of Nathaniel's maternal grandfather Richard Manning in 1813, two uncles moved to Raymond, Maine, and Nathaniel moved there in 1818, though he returned to Salem several times. Writing from the 1820s into the 1860s, and later adding a w to his surname, Nathaniel Hawthorne became a world famous author whose work profoundly influenced the modern short story and novel and helped shape a uniquely American literary and cultural identity. He died in Plymouth, New Hampshire, in 1864 and was buried in Concord, Massachusetts. He is best known for The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables. In 1958, the birthplace house was moved from this site to the property of The House of the Seven Gables for preservation, and it can be visited there today.

Salem, Massachusetts · United States