Sites Related to Nathaniel Hawthorne Outside of Salem

Between his birth in Salem and his last year as a resident of that

city in 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne visited, lived in, and wrote about

many other places in New England. This is a selected list of places

outside Salem that you might wish to visit:

Concord, Massachusetts

In Concord, you can find not only sites related to the American

Revolution, but also sites associated with the literary community of

the early nineteenth century.

Minute Man National Historical Park administers The Wayside, the only home Hawthorne ever owned and the former home

of the Alcott Family. http://www.nps.gov/mima/

Orchard House, home of the Alcotts.

http://www.louisamayalcott.org

The Trustees of Reservations administer The Old Manse, where the

Hawthornes lived for a few years after their marriage and where

Hawthorne wrote Mosses from an Old Manse.

http://www.thetrustees.org/

The Concord Museum has exhibits on literary society in Concord.

http://www.concordmuseum.org/

The Emerson House, home of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Walden Pond State Reservation, where Henry David Thoreau

lived. http://www.state.ma.us/dem/parks/wldn.htm/

Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, where Hawthorne is buried.

Boston, Massachusetts, and Environs

Boston National Historical Park’s Freedom Trail visits many of

the sites familiar to Hawthorne, including:

Boston Common, mentioned in some of his stories and sketches;

the Boston Athenaeum, where Hawthorne researched and wrote

stories while working for the Boston Custom House; and the Old

Corner Bookstore, where Ticknor and Fields Co. published the

writings of Hawthorne and most of the other literary lights of the

mid-19th century. http://www.nps.gov/bost

Longfellow National Historic Site, Cambridge, MA. Home of

Hawthorne’s close friend, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

http://www.nps.gov/long/

Western Massachusetts

Hawthorne often visited Western Massachusetts and attended a

commencement at Williams College in 1838, where he saw the

“country graduates — rough, brown-featured, schoolmaster-looking... A rough hewn, heavy set of fellows from the hills and woods

in this neighborhood; unpolished bumpkins, who had grown up as

farmer-boys.” Today, Williams is one of the top liberal arts colleges

in the country. http://www.williams.edu/

The beauty of the Berkshires was not lost on Hawthorne, and he

wrote about many of its sites, including the Natural Bridge and

Mount Greylock. http://www.state.ma.us/dem/listing.htm/

Hawthorne was fascinated by the Shakers, and visited the Hancock

Shaker Village. http://www.hancockshakervillage.org/

Also near Pittsfield is Arrowhead, the home of Herman Melville,

fellow author and friend of Hawthorne. http://www.mobydick.org/

The Hawthornes moved to Lenox, Massachusetts, after he was

fired from the Custom House. http://www.lenox.org/

Maine

Hawthorne spent many happy years in Maine, first at his uncle’s

home near Raymond and then as an undergraduate at Bowdoin

College. Today, Bowdoin has a collection of correspondence and

other documents related to Hawthorne. http://www.bowdoin.edu/.

New Hampshire

Hawthorne often visited New Hampshire and mentioned many of

its natural features in his sketches and stories, such as Mount

Washington, the Old Man of the Mountain, Crawford Notch,

and the Isle of Shoals. http://www.nhparks.state.nh.us/

Canterbury Shaker Village appeared in one of his sketches.

http://www.shakers.org/

One of the reasons Hawthorne was so familiar with New Hampshire

was through visits to the home of his lifelong friend, President

Franklin Pierce, who was a New Hampshire native.

http://www.franklinpierce.ws/

Books and Web Sites for Further Information

Books:

Mellow, James R. Nathaniel Hawthorne in His Times.

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980.

Moore, Margaret B. The Salem World of Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1998.

Tharp, Louise Hall. The Peabody Sisters of Salem.

Boston: Little, Brown, 1978.

U.S. Department of the Interior. Salem: Maritime Salem in the Age

of Sail. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2003.

Web Sites:

Nathaniel Hawthorne in Salem, a web site devoted to

Hawthorne’s life in Salem: http://www.hawthorneinsalem.org/

The Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne online:

http://www.eldritchpress.org/

The Nathaniel Hawthorne Society, a national association of

Hawthorne scholars:

http://asweb.artsci.uc.edu/english/HawthorneSociety/nh.html/

Salem Maritime National Historic Site, which administers the

Salem Custom House where Hawthorne worked:

http://www.nps.gov/sama/

The Peabody Essex Museum, which exhibits many items related

to Salem History. http://www.pem.org/

Background Image: Birds Eye View of Salem from Lafayette Street,

with the South River in the background.

Lithograph by J. W. Hill, 1854.

Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum

National Park Service

U.S. Department of the Interior

Salem Maritime National Historic Site

174 Derby Street

Salem, MA 01970

978 740-1660 phone

http://www.nps.gov/sama

EXPERIENCE YOUR AMERICA

Photograph courtesy National Park Service

This photograph of the Salem Custom House was taken in 1854, only

four years after the publication of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s masterpiece, The Scarlet Letter. The introduction to the novel is set in this

building, which is now open to the public as part of Salem Maritime

National Historic Site. The cupola was added to the building in 1853,

shortly after Hawthorne left his position as Surveyor of the Port of

Salem. Objects belonging to Hawthorne, including the desk he used,

are currently on display in the office he occupied from 1846 to 1849.

The walking tours in this booklet are designed to allow visitors of all

ages to learn about the history of Salem while walking in the footsteps of one of the greatest authors of nineteenth-century America.

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s

Salem

National Park Service

U.S. Department of the Interior

Salem Maritime National Historic Site

Salem, Massachusetts

Literary Salem in the Early

Nineteenth Century

A Walking Tour
“Halfway down a bystreet of one

of our New England towns . . .”

The Life of Nathaniel Hawthorne

Captain Nathaniel Hathorne (1775-

1808), father of Nathaniel

Hawthorne.

Engraving taken from a miniature

portrait owned by the Hawthornes

Hawthorne’s grandfather, “Bold

Daniel,” was a well-known privateer during the Revolution. Daniel’s

son, Capt. Nathaniel Hathorne

mostly sailed as an officer on ships

belonging to relatives. It appears

that his only command was of the

brig Nabby in 1807-1808. Unfortunately, this was his last voyage, for

Capt. Hathorne died in Surinam of

yellow fever in the winter of 1808.

Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in a small house in Salem on

July 4, 1804, to Capt. Nathaniel Hathorne and his wife, Elizabeth Clarke Manning. He grew up playing on the streets,

wharves, and Common of that city, read its history at the Athenaeum, and heard the local stories passed down in the

Hathorne and Manning families, who had lived in Essex

County since the early seventeenth century.

Hathorne or Hawthorne? Nathaniel Hawthorne

added the “w” to his name around 1827, probably

to make the spelling match the pronunciation.

During his long career as an author, Hawthorne wrote about

the history and people of New England, as he probed the

dark corners of the human mind and the tension between individuals and society. From these elements he fashioned

uniquely American literary works, which included some of the

finest writings of the nineteenth century.

Childhood and Education

After Capt. Hathorne’s death in 1808, the Hathornes, six-yearold Elizabeth, four-year-old Nathaniel, and the infant Louisa,

along with their mother—moved to her parents’ house.

Nathaniel began going to school shortly before he turned

four, and it seems he attended school regularly, although, like

many schoolchildren, he tried to avoid the tedious work of

1
learning his Latin and Greek. However, he managed to learn

enough of the classics to enter Bowdoin College in 1821 at the

age of 17. His career at Bowdoin was undistinguished, but he

made many lifelong friends among his classmates.

Beginning a Literary Career

Upon his return to Salem after graduation in 1825, Hawthorne

again took up residence in his attic room in “Castle Dismal,”

as he called the Manning house on Herbert Street. Three

years later, Hawthorne’s first book, the romantic novel

Fanshawe, was published at his own expense. In the late 1820s

and early 1830s, he wrote short stories and sketches that were

published in local newspapers and national literary magazines.

He also traveled extensively in New England and New York

during this period, visiting friends and recording story ideas in

a series of notebooks. In 1837, Hawthorne’s first collection of

short stories and sketches was published. Critics praised

Twice Told Tales, and the handsome young author became a

desirable guest at gatherings in Salem and Boston, especially

hosted by intellectuals like Elizabeth Peabody. Hawthorne

soon fell deeply in love with Elizabeth’s youngest sister,

Sophia.

By 1839, Hawthorne was in need of a more steady income

than that offered by writing. Many of his friends from college

were important members of the Democratic Party, and

through them he got a position with the Customs Service in

Boston. Shortly thereafter, he became secretly engaged to

Sophia Peabody. However, after two years Hawthorne found

Customs work dull. He moved to Brook Farm, an experimental commune based on Transcendentalist philosophy, where

he hoped to return to writing.

Marriage, the Old Manse, and the Custom House

On July 9, 1842, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Sophia Peabody

were married at the Peabody home in Boston, and the

Hawthornes moved into the Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts. They were living in the middle of a vibrant community of intellectuals, including Ralph Waldo and Lidian

Emerson, the Alcott Family, and Henry David Thoreau. The

three years they spent in the Old Manse were some of the

happiest of their lives. Una, the Hawthornes’ first child, was

born in the house, and there Hawthorne wrote many of the

stories that were later published in Mosses from an Old Manse.

Financial difficulties, however, ended their honeymoon in

Concord, and at the end of 1845 the couple and their baby

moved back to Salem to a room in the house on Herbert

Street where Hawthorne had spent so much of his youth.

Once again, his friends came to his rescue by recommending

him for the position of Surveyor of the Port of Salem.

2
Hawthorne was sworn in on April 9, 1846, shortly before his

son Julian’s birth in Boston. In 1848, however, the Whigs defeated the Democrats, and as a result Hawthorne lost his job

the next year. His mother’s illness and death on July 31, 1849,

only compounded his worries.

The Creation of an American Literature

From late 1849 through February 1850, Hawthorne worked on

The Scarlet Letter. This novel is considered by most critics to

be his masterpiece and one of the first truly American novels.

The Hawthornes left Salem in April 1850, soon after The Scarlet Letter was published to great critical acclaim everywhere

except Salem, where many residents did not appreciate the

depiction of the city and its people in the book’s introduction.

They moved to a rented house in Lenox, Massachusetts,

where on May 20, 1851, their last child, Rose, was born. The

three years after the publication of The Scarlet Letter were

ones of great activity for Hawthorne, who was now in his late

forties. He edited a third edition of Twice Told Tales and wrote

The House of the Seven Gables in 1850. In 1851 he oversaw the

republication of his historical children’s stories, wrote

children’s stories based on Greek myths entitled A Wonder

Book, gathered and edited previously published short works

for publication as The Snow-Image, and began writing The

Blithedale Romance, which was based on his life at Brook

Farm. The following year, the family purchased “The Wayside” in Concord from Bronson Alcott. There, Hawthorne

wrote the campaign biography of his best friend, Franklin

Pierce, who ran successfully for President on the Democratic

ticket in 1852. On March 26, 1853, shortly after he finished

Tanglewood Tales, the Senate confirmed Hawthorne as United

States Consul at Liverpool and Manchester, England.

Nathaniel and Sophia Hawthorne’s

children. Left to right: Una, Julian,

and Rose.

Carte-de-visite photograph by

Silsbee and Case, circa 1862.

After her mother’s death, Una edited

some of her father’s unfinished

work. She was often ill and died in

England in 1877. Julian embarked on

a career as a writer and promoter of

his father’s work. He died in San

Francisco in 1934. The Hawthorne’s

youngest daughter, Rose, became a

nun after the death of her husband,

George Lathrop, and founded an order that works with poor cancer victims. She died in 1926. In 2003, Rose

was nominated for sainthood.

Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum

3
An Author Abroad

For the next four years, Hawthorne dealt with customs issues,

the rights of American sailors, and other diplomatic problems.

He was honored in England for his writing, and the entire

family was often invited to dinners, events and country

houses, where they met many of the English literary figures of

the day. Although he did not publish any major works during

his time as Consul, he continually recorded his activities and

impressions in his notebooks. By 1856, however, Hawthorne

was concerned about Sophia’s health and the increasingly tumultuous politics in the United States. He resigned as Consul

effective August 31, 1857.

The Hawthornes traveled through Europe for the next three

years, mainly living in Rome and Florence among expatriate

American and English artists. In Rome, the Hawthornes met

old friends, like sculptor William Wetmore Story, while in Florence they met Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Hawthorne began writing The Marble Faun, a novel based on

the American artistic community in Rome, but his work

stopped when Una nearly died from malaria. The whole family returned to England in mid-1859, where Hawthorne finished The Marble Faun, and in June 1860 they returned to

America.

Coming Home

Hawthorne’s return to the Wayside marked the beginning of

the last chapter of his life. He wrote stories based on his English notebooks that appeared in the Atlantic Monthly before

being published as Our Old Home, and began a couple of

longer romances. Throughout 1861 and 1862 he traveled, going

as far south as Washington, DC, where he met President

Abraham Lincoln.

Hawthorne’s health deteriorated after his southern trip. In

the hope of recovering his strength, he and Franklin Pierce

began a tour through New England in May 1864. Six days after beginning his trip, however, Hawthorne died in his sleep

on May 19, 1864, in the Pemigewasset House hotel in Plymouth, New Hampshire. Some of the greatest names in

American literature attended his funeral in Concord on May

23, including his lifelong friend Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

The unfinished manuscript of one of his last works, The

Dolliver Romance, lay on Hawthorne’s coffin during the ceremony and inspired a verse in Longfellow’s memorial poem:

There in seclusion and remote from men

The wizard hand lies cold,

Which at its topmost speed let fall the pen

And left the tale half told.

4
“I felt it almost as a destiny to

make Salem my home.”

A Seafaring City in the Early Industrial Era

Log book of the 1796 voyage of the ship America

kept by Capt. Nathaniel

Hathorne, and decorated

by his son in 1820.

The America was owned

by Elias Hasket Derby and

mastered by Jacob

Crowninshield. On this

voyage, Capt.

Crowninshield brought

back the first elephant

ever seen in the United

States.

Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum

Nathaniel Hawthorne lived during a time of radical change in

Salem. The city he was born into in 1804 was still at the height

of its wealth and influence. It was the center for the worldwide pepper trade, and the busy waterfront only a block away

from Hawthorne’s birthplace was filled with exotic sights,

sounds, and smells, as ships like those his father sailed on unloaded their cargoes. As Hawthorne played on Union and

Herbert Streets, he would have been within earshot of the

pounding hammers and shouts of workmen at the shipyard of

Enos Briggs across the South River from Derby Wharf. Other

industries active at that time included rope making, distilling,

and tanning, all involved with the construction, maintenance,

or supplying of the trading fleet.

Embargo and War Change the Trade of Salem

The embargo of 1807 grounded Salem’s fleet for 15 months,

and was soon followed by the War of 1812. Together, these

events greatly reduced the East India trade of Salem. Although Hawthorne was too young to clearly remember the

embargoed ships moored in Salem Harbor, he probably did

remember the war, and the battle of the frigates Chesapeake

and Shannon in Salem Harbor on June 1, 1813. Although the

East India trade from Salem continued for another forty years

or so after the end of the War of 1812, the city never regained

her position as an important East Indies port.

5
Oil Painting of the

Naumkeag Steam

Cotton Mill, c. 1850

Courtesy American

Textile History Museum

Industry Comes to Salem

By the time Hawthorne returned from college in 1825, the

character of Salem’s economy was changing. Industry independent of the maritime trade began to spring up; a lead

works was built next to the Briggs shipyard in 1826, a chemical

company near the North River in 1819, and a gum copal processing plant in 1835. As the shoemaking industry in Lynn expanded, the number of tanneries in Salem grew dramatically

as well. Shortly after Hawthorne became Surveyor of the Port

of Salem in 1846, the Naumkeag Steam Cotton Mill opened on

the site of the lead works and began a century of production

of cotton sheeting.

Trade during Hawthorne’s Term as Surveyor

Due to this growth in homegrown manufacturing, by the time

Hawthorne was sworn in as Surveyor, the maritime trade of

Salem had gone through a reversal. In the early years of the

nineteenth century, vessels left port with rum and codfish in

their holds and returned with spices, silks, coffee, and other

expensive, exotic goods that had high customs duties. By the

middle of the century, however, vessels were leaving Salem

laden with furniture from Salem shops, cloth from the

Naumkeag Mill, and shoes from Lynn. These finished goods

were traded for hides from West Africa for the shoe factories,

gum copal from Zanzibar for varnish, and lead for paint and

piping made in Salem. Items such as these were bulky, but

had low customs duties. So, while the number of vessels and

weight of cargo coming into the port did not really decrease

through the middle of the nineteenth century, the glamorous

cargoes, spectacular wealth, and immense customs duties did

disappear from Salem’s wharves.

Hawthorne’s description of the empty, dilapidated wharves of

the city in The Scarlet Letter is probably more poetic than true.

However, as he oversaw the measuring of tons of hides, cotton, and lead on Derby Wharf to the constant noise of the

cotton mill only yards away, he was probably thinking of the

romance of the cargoes of his youth. After all, cinnamon and

cloves smell better than raw cowhides.

6
“My Dearest Dove”

Sophia Amelia Peabody Hawthorne

Engraving of Sophia Amelia

Peabody at the age of 36

Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum

Sophia Amelia Peabody was born in Salem on September 21,

1809, the third of six children of Dr. Nathaniel and Elizabeth

Palmer Peabody. From her childhood she was declared to be

“of a delicate constitution,” particularly after she developed

migraines as a teenager, and therefore was not expected to

live very long. However, both her parents had been teachers,

and her father was a Harvard-educated dentist and physician.

So the fragile young woman learned Greek, Latin, Hebrew,

French, and Italian, although she was not allowed to teach in

order to supplement the family income as did her older sisters. Sophia was able to contribute in another way, though:

she was a gifted artist and copied oil paintings to sell. Her sister Elizabeth introduced her to the famous painter Washington Allston, who greatly admired Sophia’s work. Her health

improved when she was away from home—perhaps because

of the separation from her strong-willed mother and oldest

sister—and so as a young woman she traveled around New

England visiting friends and even went to Cuba with her sister

Mary for a few months.

The Peabody Sisters

Sophia had two older sisters, Elizabeth and Mary, and three

younger brothers, Nathaniel Cranch, George, and Wellington.

Mary is best known as the second wife of Horace Mann, the

great education reformer and first president of Antioch College. It was Elizabeth, however, who was the most famous of

the three sisters. In 1840, the Peabodys moved to Boston, and

Lizzie opened a bookshop in the family home on West Street

that quickly became the center of intellectual life in Boston.

Literary lights, such as William Ellery Channing, Ralph Waldo

7
“Being dissatisfied with the position of Ilbrahim’s

foot, in the illustration of the Gentle Boy, Sophia

said ‘She could not sleep because Ilbrahim kicked

her.’” Notebook entry of Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1838

Illustration for “The Gentle Boy” by Sophia Peabody for the second

printing of Hawthorne’s short story in 1839. Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum

Emerson, and Margaret Fuller, could often be found there

browsing the shelves, chatting with friends, or lecturing. In

later life, Elizabeth Peabody became known for pioneering

the kindergarten movement in America.

“How I long to be in thy arms”

Although it is unlikely that it was love at first sight, as Lizzie

claimed, it is undeniable that Sophia and Nathaniel were

deeply in love and remained so all their lives. The clearest evidence of their love is in their passion-filled correspondence

and the journals they shared. Many of the illnesses and headaches associated with Sophia’s “delicate constitution” disappeared when she became secretly engaged to her young author in 1839 and did not return after her marriage and the

birth of three children. Her artistic talents were also useful

after her marriage, for she was able to sell her work when

times were difficult for the young couple. After Hawthorne’s

death, Sophia edited his notebooks for publication, and in

1868, she and the children sailed for Germany. Upon Julian’s

graduation from school in Dresden, Sophia, Una, and Rose

moved to England in 1870, where Sophia died on February 26,

1871. She is buried in Kensal Green Cemetery in London, an

ocean away from the husband she adored.

8
“I feel pretty well since my head

has been chopt off.”

The Custom House Controversy

By the mid-1840s,

Nathaniel Hawthorne

was well known, but

his short works published in magazines and collected in books

were not bringing in enough money to support his family. After the Hawthornes left

Concord and returned to Salem in 1845, his

friends in the Democratic Party nominated

him for the post of Surveyor of the Port of Salem. So, on April

9, 1846, “I ascended the flight of granite steps, with the

President’s commission in my pocket, and was introduced to

the corps of gentlemen who were to aid me in my weighty responsibility.”

The Surveyor’s Duties

The day-to-day duties of the Surveyor included overseeing

about fifteen Customs Officers as they processed cargoes entering the port of Salem. As Surveyor, Hawthorne answered

to the Collector and Deputy Collector and was the only person in the Custom House authorized to use a hydrometer to

measure the alcohol content of wine and spirits.

Hawthorne Loses His Job

In 1848, Zachary Taylor, a Whig, was elected to the presidency.

During the campaign, Taylor promised not to remove appointees of James K. Polk’s Democratic administration except in

cases of wrongdoing. The local Whigs, however, decided they

wanted Hawthorne’s position, and so local politicians, some of

whom he had once considered his friends, started a series of

vitriolic attacks. While he had never written political articles

The view from Hawthorne’s

office window in the Custom

House, drawn in 1888 as an

illustration for his son

Julian’s article “The Salem of

Hawthorne” in The Century

Magazine.

9
for the Salem Advertiser, as the Whigs claimed, some of their

accusations were true. Hawthorne did give more work (and

therefore more money) to Democratic Inspectors, but the

most serious accusation was that Hawthorne threatened to

lay off two of his employees if they did not contribute to the

Democrats. He had actually written letters of dismissal on orders from Washington, but they were never given to the Inspectors.

“Neither the front nor the back entrance of the

Custom-House opens on the road to Paradise.”

Hawthorne fought valiantly to retain his position throughout

the spring of 1849, writing to friends who might be able to use

their influence in Washington to help him, but he was finally

dismissed on June 8, 1849. He continued to try to retain his

position through most of the summer, but he finally gave up

after his mother’s death in July, admitting his head had been

“chopt off,” as he wrote to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

The Scarlet Letter

The anger over his dismissal, as well as grief over his mother’s

death, drove him to his study on the third floor of his house

on Mall Street. By September, Sophia reported that he was

writing “immensely.” The Scarlet Letter, which many scholars

believe to be his finest work, was completed in February. The

first edition sold out within weeks and immediately went into

a second printing. Since Democratic newspapers all over the

nation had carried the story of his fight to keep his job, many

people were interested in hearing Hawthorne’s side of the

story. As a result, the popularity of the book had less to do

with the plot of the novel than it did with its introduction.

“The Custom House” was Hawthorne’s barbed and extremely

funny response to his dismissal, and while it offended many residents of

Salem, it was well received outside the city.

“Neither the front nor

the back entrance of the

Custom-House,”

Hawthorne wrote,

“opens on the road to

Paradise.” For Nathaniel

Hawthorne, those doors opened onto artistic success, and in

the years following his dismissal he wrote some of the greatest

works of nineteenth-century American literature.

10
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Salem:

A Walking Tour

“This old town of Salem,” writes Hawthorne in

“The Custom House,” “. . . possesses, or did

possess, a hold on my affections, the force of which

I have never realized during my seasons of actual

residence here. . . . there is within me a feeling for

old Salem, which, in lack of a better phrase, I must

be content to call affection.”

Although Hawthorne often criticized the city of his birth, he

could not deny that it had an enormous influence on his life

and work. The rest of this booklet consists of three walking

tours designed to explore the people, places, and events that

were familiar to Hawthorne during his years in the city.

All the walking tours begin and end at the Hawthorne Memorial on Hawthorne Boulevard, indicated by a star on the

map at the back of this brochure. Stops on the walking tours

are also indicated on the map.

Relations and Relationships (pages 12-17) focuses on

the people who influenced him during his childhood and

after his return to Salem after his college years.

Salem in Print (pages 18-24) explores some of the sites

and events in Salem that Hawthorne used in his writings.

The Custom House (pages 25-32) examines the four

years Hawthorne spent as Surveyor of the Port of Salem

and the places he mentions in the introduction to his first successful novel, The Scarlet Letter.

Each tour should take approximately 45 minutes to one hour

to complete. As you are walking around the city of Salem,

please be careful crossing the streets, and watch your footing

on some of the older sidewalks. Like all of New England, Salem can be subject to extremes in weather, so please be sure

to dress accordingly and wear comfortable footwear.

Hawthorne Boulevard was created in the early twentieth

century by the widening of Elm Street. In 1925, the

bronze statue by Bela Lyon Pratt was dedicated by the City of

Salem as a memorial to Salem’s best known native author.

11
Walking Tour 1: Relations and

Relationships

To begin the tour, from the Memorial proceed south on Hawthorne

Boulevard (down the slope) and turn left on Derby Street. Turn left

again on Union Street. Between numbers 21 and 31 Union Street is a

parking lot where Nathaniel Hawthorne’s birthplace once stood.

This small house was purchased in 1772 by Capt. Daniel

Hathorne and inherited by his son Capt. Nathaniel Hathorne.

It was here that Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on July 4,

1804, the second child of Capt. Nathaniel Hathorne and his

wife Elizabeth Clarke Manning. Capt. Nathaniel’s death in

1808 of yellow fever in Surinam left Elizabeth Manning

Hathorne without much money, and so later that year she

moved back into her family home around the corner with

Nathaniel, his older sister Elizabeth, and younger sister

Louisa. Hawthorne would have been very familiar with the

house, since his grandmother and two of his aunts continued

to live here. In 1958, the house was moved to the grounds of

the House of the Seven Gables on Turner Street and is now

open to the public seasonally.

Proceed north on Union Street to Essex Street. On the left corner is

the Brown Building.

The Brown Building was built in 1808-1809, and is the oldest

brick multi-use building surviving in the city. In 1810 Dr.

Nathaniel Peabody, his wife, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, and

their three daughters, Elizabeth, Mary, and one-year-old

Sophia, moved into one of the residential units in the building.

Years later, Elizabeth recalled that when she was a girl, she

saw “a little boy with clustering locks” playing in the back garThe Brown Building, corner

of Union and Essex Streets.

Photograph, 1888. Photographer unknown.

Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum

27 Union Street, birthplace

of Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Photograph by Frank Cousins, c.1890.

 Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum

1

2

12
Turn right on Essex Street, walk one short block, and then turn right

again on Herbert Street. Proceed south along Herbert to

10 1⁄2 -12 Herbert Street.

10 1⁄2-12 Herbert Street, the

Manning House.

Photograph, c. 1890. Photographer unkown.

Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum

Elizabeth Clarke Manning’s family was wealthier than the

Hathornes, and it was probably for this reason that Elizabeth

returned to her childhood home after her husband’s death.

When Hawthorne, his mother, and his sisters moved into this

large house in 1808, they joined an unusually large household

that in 1810 numbered twenty people. This house was

Hawthorne’s main residence between 1808 and 1840, although

he went to Bowdoin College from 1821 to 1825, and he, his

mother and sisters moved to a cottage in North Salem on

Dearborn Street between 1828 and 1832. Hawthorne wrote

many of his early stories and sketches in his room on the third

floor of this house, but he continued to refer to the house

throughout his life as “Castle Dismal.” Writing to his wife in

1840, Hawthorne stated, “If ever I should have a biographer,

he ought to make great mention of this chamber in my memoirs, because so much of my lonely youth was wasted here,

and here my mind and character were formed. . . . I sat a long,

long time waiting patiently for the world to know me, and

sometimes wondering why it did not know me sooner, or

whether it would ever know me at all . . .” However, it was

during his residence in this building that his first stories and

collections were published, to great acclaim, and in a moment

of defiant triumph he recorded in his notebook, “In this dismal chamber FAME was won!”

Continue south on Herbert Street to Derby Street and turn left. 188

Derby Street is set back from the street on the corner of Hodges

Court.

den of the Manning home on Herbert Street. At that time, she

had no idea that she was watching her future brother-in-law.

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188 Derby Street, home of

Rachel Hathorne Forrester

(1757-1823).

Portrait by James Frothingham,

1822.

Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum

Through blood and marriage, Hawthorne was related to most

of the wealthy and influential families in Salem. One of his

father’s sisters married into the Crowninshield family. The

other, Rachel (depicted in this portrait the year before she

died in 1823), married Simon Forrester, one of the wealthiest

East India merchants in Salem. Forrester came to Salem at the

age of 19 and was a protege of Rachel’s father, Capt. Daniel

Hathorne. In 1791, at the age of 43, Forrester had made

enough money to purchase this home, designed by Samuel

McIntire, and the wharf that still stands across the street.

Capt. Nathaniel Hathorne sailed as an officer on several vessels for his brother-in-law, some as large as the Friendship, the

tall ship that is docked today at Salem Maritime National Historic Site, and probably sailed from Forrester’s Wharf several

times. Nathaniel Hawthorne grew up visiting his aunt, uncle,

and cousins in this house, and mentions the Forresters in his

later writings.

Continue down Derby Street, past Salem Maritime National Historical

Site to Turner Street. Turn right on Turner Street. The House of the

Seven Gables, 57 Turner Street, is on the right.

57 Turner Street, The Turner

House after alterations of

around 1865.

Photograph by Harwood, c.1865-

1870.

Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum

By the time Hawthorne was a boy, three of the gables had

been removed from the old Turner Mansion, as this house

was then known. Susannah Ingersoll, who inherited the

house in 1811, was a cousin of Hawthorne’s, and after he returned to Salem upon graduation from Bowdoin in 1825, he

and his sister Louisa often came to the house to play cards

with Susannah, her adopted son Horace Conolly, and other

family friends. According to Conolly, Susannah gave

Hawthorne the idea for a collection of historical stories for

children entitled Grandfather’s Chair by telling him he could

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write the story of all the Puritans who owned an old chair that

sat in the house. On the same visit, Susannah took

Hawthorne to the attic of the house and showed him the

marks of the missing gables. In the preface to The House of the

Seven Gables, Hawthorne states that the house in the book

bears no relation to any house standing, but he begins the

novel thus: “Half-way down a by-street of one of our New

England towns, stands a rusty wooden house, with seven

acutely peaked gables, facing towards various points of the

compass, and a huge, clustered chimney in the midst.” Today,

the house has been restored to its seventeenth century appearance and is open to the public.

Return to Derby Street, cross the street, and continue up Turner

Street to Essex Street. Turn left on Essex Street, and right on Washington Square East. Number 94 Washington Square East is three

blocks north, on the corner of Briggs Street.

94 Washington Square East,

home of Mary Crowninshield

Silsbee Sparks (1809-1887)

Portrait by Francis Alexander, c.1830.

Courtesy Harvard University Portrait Collection, bequest of Lizzie Sparks Pickering

to Harvard University

Mary Crowninshield Silsbee (1809-1887) was the daughter of

Senator Nathaniel Silsbee, who built this mansion on Salem

Common in 1819. Mary was a beauty, called “The Star of Salem” by her admirers. She was worldly, flirtatious, and according to Hawthorne’s future sister-in-law Elizabeth

Peabody (who did not like her) “she liked to create difficulties

and intrigues.” Throughout 1837 and 1838, rumors grew in Salem that the rising young author was engaged to the lovely

heiress, especially after Mary had a portrait painted that depicted her with a mysterious hunter who looked very much

like Hawthorne. When Sophia Peabody, Hawthorne’s future

wife, saw the portrait in 1838, she desired to be alone with it so

much that she “wanted to put Miss Mary out of the window,”

as she wrote to her sister. Hawthorne’s involvement with

“The Star of Salem” ended in the fall of 1838 after she tried to

force him to fight a duel with his good friend John O’Sullivan.

In 1839 Mary married Jared Sparks, an historian who later became president of Harvard University. Many critics agree

that Hawthorne’s relationship with Mary Silsbee was the basis

of his story “Rappacini’s Daughter” about a young woman

who is poisonous to the touch.

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15
Cross Washington Square East, and then continue directly across the

Salem Common.

West Entrance of Salem

Common.

Daguerreotype, c. 1850.

Photographer unknown.

This view shows the entrance arch

carved by Salem architect Samuel

McIntire.

Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum

In 1801, the city transformed the “town swamp,” as the Salem

Common was often called, into a park, with trees and walks.

The western gate, seen in this daguerreotype of 1850, was designed and carved by Samuel McIntire. By the time

Hawthorne graduated from Bowdoin in 1825, the industry

around “Washington Square” as the Common was renamed,

had been replaced by grand mansions like that of the Silsbee

family, and the Common had become a popular place for city

celebrations. On July 4, 1838, his thirty-fourth birthday,

Hawthorne attended the festivities on the Common, perhaps

to distract himself from his disintegrating relationship with

Mary Silsbee. He recorded his impressions: “A very hot,

bright, sunny day; town much thronged; booths on the Common, selling gingerbread, sugar-plums, and confectionery,

spruce beer, lemonade. . . . . On the top of one of the booths a

monkey, with a tail two or three feet long. . . . He is the object

of much attention from the crowd, and played with by the

boys, who toss up gingerbread to him, while he nibbles and

throws it down again. He reciprocates notice, of some kind or

other, with all who notice him. There is a sort of gravity about

him.”

From the southwest corner of the Common, cross Hawthorne Boulevard, turn left, and go south 1 1⁄2 blocks to Charter Street. Turn right

on Charter Street and proceed past the graveyard to number 54

Charter Street.

54 Charter Street, home of

the Peabody Family.

Photograph by G. A.

Robinson, 1888.

The front entrance of the house was

later removed and given to the

Peabody Essex Museum, where it is

now used as the rear entrance of

the Phillips Library on Essex Street.

Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum

Dr. Nathaniel Peabody, his wife Elizabeth Palmer Peabody,

and his daughters Elizabeth, Mary, and Sophia moved into

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this house next to the “Old Burying Point Cemetery” in 1835.

Dr. Peabody was a dentist and saw patients in the house, using

the parlor as his waiting room. In 1837, his daughter Elizabeth,

who was very involved with intellectual society in the Boston

area, invited Hawthorne, who had recently become noticed

for his publication Twice Told Tales, to call at this house.

Hawthorne and his sisters became friendly with the family,

and after his relationship with Mary Silsbee ended he fell in

love with the youngest Peabody daughter, Sophia. It was this

house that he refers to in his first surviving love letter to

Sophia, which begins: “My dearest Sophie, I had a parting

glimpse of you, Monday forenoon, at your window—and that

image abides by me, looking pale and not so quiet as is your

wont.” The Peabodys moved to Boston in 1840, and it was in

the family’s home, where Elizabeth Peabody had her famous

bookshop, that Hawthorne and his “Dearest Dove” were

married on July 9, 1842. This house continued to haunt

Hawthorne, and many years later he set his two last unfinished works, The Dolliver Romance and Dr. Grimshawe’s Secret in the old Peabody home.

Although Hawthorne left Salem often to go on

trips, vacations, and lengthy visits before leaving it

permanently (or so he and Sophia thought) after

the wedding in 1842, Salem was never very far

from his mind. The city is a constant presence in

the sketches and stories he published in the 1830s

and 1840s, and it is the Salem of Hawthorne’s inspiration that we will explore next.

To begin the next stage of the tour, return down Charter Street

to the Hawthorne Memorial on Hawthorne Boulevard.

17
Walking Tour 2: Salem In Print

From the Hawthorne Memorial, walk north to Essex Street, then turn

left. The second house on the right, number 128 Essex Street, is the

Gardner-Pingree House.

128 Essex Street, the

Gardner-PIngree House,

home of Captain Joseph

White (1748-1830).

Pastel Portrait, c. 1780 by Benjamin

Blyth.

Captain White’s murder on August

6, 1830, in the Gardner-Pingree

House horrified the city of Salem.

Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum.

This magnificent Federal style mansion was designed by

Samuel McIntire and built in 1804, the same year Nathaniel

Hawthorne was born. In 1814 the house was purchased by

Captain Joseph White, a successful East India merchant. On

April 7, 1830, the eighty-three year old merchant was brutally

murdered in his bed. White had been bludgeoned and then

stabbed more than ten times. Like everyone else in Salem,

Hawthorne paid close attention to the hunt for the murderers. When two of the Crowninshield family and two brothers

from another respectable merchant family, the Knapps, were

arrested, Salem and Boston newspapers were full of reports of

the trial, which was prosecuted by the famous lawyer and

statesman Daniel Webster. It appeared that one of the Knapp

brothers believed that his wife would inherit a fortune if

White died without a will, so he hired two Crowninshield

brothers to murder White and destroy the will. Hawthorne,

who seems to have been acquainted with the Knapps, wrote

to a relative, “I am afraid Captain Knapp himself meets with

but little real pity, and everybody is eager for the death of his

two sons. For my part, I wish Joe to be punished, but I should

not be very sorry if Frank were to escape.” Twenty years after

the Knapps were executed, Hawthorne used elements of the

story in his novel The House of the Seven Gables.

Continue west on Essex Street approximately 1⁄2 block to the pedestrian walkway. Turn left, and walk through to Charter Street. Turn

right, walk a few dozen yards, and then enter the Old Burying Point

Cemetery on the left.

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18
“In the old burial ground, Charter Street, a slate gravestone,

carved round the borders, to the memory of ‘Colonel John

Hathorne, Esq.,’ who died in 1717. This was the witch-judge.

The stone is sunk deep into the earth, and leans forward, and

the grass grows very long around it; and, on account of the

moss, it was rather difficult to make out the date. Other

Hathornes lie buried in a range with him on either side,” wrote

Hawthorne in his notebook in 1838. Eight members of the

Hathorne family are buried in this cemetery, including

Hawthorne’s grandparents. But the gravestone Hawthorne

kept returning to in his writing was that of his great-greatgrandfather Colonel John Hathorne, who was appointed to

the court that examined the accused witches during the hysteria of 1692. Hawthorne must have spent a good deal of time

in this graveyard, for he found inspiration for several of his

stories in the stones here. One of the graves that fascinated

him was that of Nathaniel Mather, for he recorded in his notebook, “the younger brother of Cotton, and mentioned in the

Magnalia as a hard student, and of great promise. ‘An aged

man at nineteen years,’ saith the gravestone. It affected me

deeply, when I had cleared away the grass from the half-buried stone, and read the name.” The story of Nathaniel

Mather’s early death was the basis for his first major work,

Fanshawe, published in 1828.

Charter Street Burial

Ground, the gravestone of

Colonel John Hathorne.

Photograph by Edwin Miller, c.

1980.

Col. Hathorne, the great-greatgrandfather of Nathaniel

Hawthorne, was a judge at the

1692 Salem witch trials.

Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum

Turn left out of the cemetery gate, and continue straight along Charter Street onto Front Street. At the right hand side of the corner of

Front Street and Washington Street is a large brick building called

Lawrence Place.

The Salem Athenaeum, founded in 1810 from the merging of

two older libraries, is a subscription library. Hawthorne’s

uncle William Manning and his aunt Mary Manning both

owned shares in the Athenaeum, and eventually Mary gave

her share to Hawthorne. Hawthorne and his sisters frequently

borrowed books from the Athenaeum, and the history he

learned from those books appeared in many of his writings.

The Athenaeum moved several times during the early years of

its existence: from 1815 to 1825 it was in a building on Essex

2

3 34 Front Street, Lawrence Place.

Home of the Salem Athenaeum from 1841 to 1857.

19
Street at the head of Central Street, and from 1825 to 1841 it

was in a building on Essex Street next to the East India Marine

Hall. Neither of these buildings stands today. In 1841, the Athenaeum moved to this building, “Lawrence Place,” where it

stayed until 1857. According to the 1846 Salem city directory,

the 10,000 volumes were “scientifically arranged, as far as

practicable, on the sides of the Hall and in alcoves,” and the library was “open every day between the hours of 12 and 1, for

the delivery of books.” When Hawthorne was in Salem visiting

his relatives in 1844, he wrote to his wife, “I spend almost all

my afternoons at the Athenaeum.” Today, the Athenaeum is located at 337 Essex Street.

At the corner of Front and Washington Streets, look to the left to

Riley Plaza, where a circle of flagpoles stands in front of the Post Office.

In 1838, only nine years after the first steam locomotives began

running in the United States, the Eastern Railroad line from

Boston to Salem was opened. For the first year, the line ended

in Salem, and the railroad station stood on Riley Plaza, where

a parking lot is now located. Hawthorne supported the railroad; in his sketch “The Sister Years,” about a conversation

between the years 1838 and 1839, when the year 1839 asks her

older sister what has happened over the past year, 1838 responds that she has opened the railroad. “Old Salem,” she

says, “now wears a much livelier expression than when I first

beheld her. Strangers rumble down from Boston by hundreds

at a time. New faces throng in Essex Street. Railroad hacks

and omnibuses rattle over the pavements. There is a perceptible increase of oyster-shops, and other establishments for

the accommodation of a transitory diurnal multitude. But a

more important change awaits the venerable town. An immense accumulation of musty prejudices will be carried off by

the free circulation of society.”

Lower Washington Street,

circa 1867.

Lithograph by J. Warren

Thyng.

This Gothic Revival design replaced

the original wooden depot in 1846.

In 1954, it was replaced by the current depot at the opposite end of

Washington Street.

Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum.

Turn right, and walk up Washington Street one block.

The Daniel Low building, on the southeast corner of Washington and Essex Streets, was originally built in 1826 as the

meetinghouse for the First Church. It was the fourth building

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built in this spot for the congregation, which was organized in

1629. The brick structure, seen here from Essex Street, had

retail space on the first floor and the meetinghouse on the

second floor. It was remodeled and expanded to the east and

west in 1874. The Hathornes had been members of the First

Church for generations, and Hawthorne’s mother, Elizabeth

Manning Hathorne, joined the church in 1806. Hawthorne

and his sisters were baptized into the congregation in the

wooden meetinghouse that preceded this building and attended services there. Towards the end of his life, Hawthorne

mentioned in his essay collection Our Old Home, “the old

wooden meeting-house in Salem, which used, on wintry Sabbaths, to be the frozen purgatory of my childhood.” John

Prince, the minister of the First Church in Hawthorne’s childhood, was remembered fondly by him as the “the good old silver-headed clergyman, who seemed to me as much a saint

then on earth as he is now in heaven, and partly for whose

sake, through all these darkening years, I retain a devout,

though not intact nor unwavering respect for the entire fraternity.” Hawthorne’s respect for ministers wavered mainly

because of Prince’s successor, Charles W. Upham. Upham was

a political enemy of Hawthorne’s and instrumental in getting

the author fired from the Custom Service in 1849.

Corner of Washington and

Essex Streets, the Daniel

Low Building.

Woodcut by F. Hedge for the 1850

Salem City Directory.

The first floor of the First Church

building was rented out to shopkeepers, and in 1850 Goldthwait, W.

Bowditch, and C. Webster had their

stores in the building.

Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum

Center of Essex Street, The

Old Town Pump Memorial

Fountain.

Sketch of the Town Pump, by an unknown artist. This sketch was one

of the illustrations to Julian

Hawthorne’s article “The Salem of

Hawthorne” in the May 1884 Century Magazine.

Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum

In the center of Essex Street, in front of the Daniel Low

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Building, is a fountain. This is the site of the Town Pump, the

subject of one of Hawthorne’s most popular sketches, “A Rill

From the Town Pump.” Told by the Town Pump itself, “A Rill”

is on the surface a temperance lecture, but it is also a satire of

the most extreme temperance activists. Some scholars have

identified this piece as a response by Hawthorne to his friend

George Cheever’s trial for libel in 1835 for writing an inflammatory temperance tract targeting a local church deacon. As

an anti-alcohol message, however, it was one of Hawthorne’s

most often republished sketches, including a version that appeared in a school reader. At the end of the sketch, the Town

Pump asks, “when I shall have decayed, like my predecessors,

then, if you revere my memory, let a marble fountain, richly

sculptured, take my place upon this spot.” In 1976, this fountain was built in response to that request. The fountain depicts some of the scenes from Salem history described by the

Town Pump in the sketch.

Continue up Washington Street half a block to City Hall, number 93

Washington Street

93 Washington Street, Salem

City Hall.

Woodcut by “W.” for the

1850 Salem City Directory.

Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum

Salem’s City Hall was completed in 1838 and is a wonderful example of the Greek Revival Style. The building appears in

Hawthorne’s story “The Sister Years,” about the years 1838

and 1839: “Last night, between eleven and twelve o’clock,

when the Old Year was leaving her final foot-prints on the

borders of Time’s empire, she found herself in possession of a

few spare moments, and sat down—of all places in the

world—on the steps of our new City Hall. . . . The New Year . .

. greeted the disconsolate Old Year with great affection, and

sat down beside her on the steps of the City Hall, waiting for

the signal to begin her rambles through the world.” While

talking of all the events of 1838, the Old Year perhaps reflects

Hawthorne’s own feelings about Salem politics when she

states, “here we sit, on the steps of the new City Hall, which

has been completed under my administration; and it would

make you laugh to see how the game of politics, of which the

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While standing in front of City Hall, look up Washington Street toward Federal Street

Intersection of Washington

and Federal Streets.

View of the Court House and

Court Street, 1839-1845, attributed

to William Henry Luscomb.

Until 1839, this courthouse sat in

the middle of Washington Street,

when it was torn down to make

way for the railroad tunnel.

Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum

One of the events that the year 1838 also witnessed was the

commencement of work for the Eastern Railroad Tunnel,

which was dug under Washington Street. The old courthouse,

which was designed by Samuel McIntire and built in 1785, was

removed, and a trench was dug down the center of the street.

Granite blocks were used to make an archway, and then the

street surface was restored. In “The Sister Years,” 1838 predicts that “a peculiarity of character, of which the inhabitants

themselves are hardly sensible, will be rubbed down and worn

away by the attrition of foreign substances. Much of the result

will be good; there will likewise be a few things not so good.

Whether for better or worse, there will be a probable diminution of the moral influence of wealth, and the sway of an aristocratic class, which, from an era far beyond my memory, has

held firmer dominion here than in any other New England

town,” Besides bringing in new ideas, the new line made

travel and freight movement easier in the area. The railroad

prolonged the life of the Salem port and encouraged the

growth of the factories and industries that by the 1830s were

quickly replacing the warehouses and shipyards around Salem

harbor.

Retrace your steps back down Washington Street to Essex Street,

and take a left on Essex Street. This is the “principal street of my

native town” that appears in several of Hawthorne’s stories and

sketches, most notably the 1849 sketch “Main Street,” where he

describes some of the history of Salem through scenes on Essex

Street. Proceed down the Pedestrian Mall until you reach the East

India Marine Hall, on the right across from a large fountain.

Capitol at Washington is the great chess-board, is here played

in miniature.” Since his years at Bowdoin College, Hawthorne

had close connections with the Democratic Party. Within ten

years of writing this essay, he was caught up in Salem’s political

game, and his experiences as Surveyor of the Port of Salem

proved to be no laughing matter.

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The East India Marine Society, according to the announcement in the 1850 Salem City Directory, “is composed of persons who have actually navigated the seas beyond the Cape of

Good Hope, or Cape Horn, as Masters or Supercargoes of

vessels belonging to Salem.” The Society was founded in 1799,

and Hawthorne’s father was one of its early members. In 1825,

the East India Marine Hall was completed, with an open hall

on the second floor designed to hold the museum of the society. Hawthorne often visited the museum, and brought

friends, such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Franklin

Pierce, and Henry David Thoreau, to view the remarkable

collection of strange and beautiful objects from all over the

world. Hawthorne was obviously thinking about the museum’s

curiosities when he wrote the sketch “A Virtuoso’s Collection,”

about a collection of mythological and historical artifacts.

With a growing family by the mid-1840s, the small

amount of money Hawthorne was making from

his widely acclaimed stories and sketches was not

meeting his expenses, despite Sophia’s additions to

the family income by her painting. Since he had already spent some time in the U.S. Customs Service

in Boston, he got the job of Surveyor of the Port of

Salem. The job, and his fight to retain it, were to

prove very trying for Hawthorne, but out of this

experience was to come one of the greatest works

of American literature. The last part of the tour

will focus on his tenure as Surveyor and on the

sites mentioned in the introduction to The Scarlet

Letter, the essay entitled “The Custom House.”

East India Square, East India

Marine Hall.

Woodcut by F. E. Worcester

for the 1850 Salem City Directory.

East India Marine Hall was the

home of the museum of the East India Marine Society. Today, the Hall

and the collections of the Society

are part of the Peabody Essex Museum.

Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum

To begin the final segment of the tour, continue down Essex

Street to the Hawthorne Memorial on Hawthorne Boulevard.

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24
Walking Tour 3: “The Custom

House”

From the Hawthorne Memorial, walk north to Essex Street, turn right,

and walk five short blocks to Orange Street. Turn right on Orange

Street, and proceed down Orange Street to Derby Street. On the

east corner of Derby and Orange Streets stands the Custom House.

The Salem Custom House was built in 1819, the last in a series

of Custom Houses that had been located in the city since

1649. The eagle, which according to Hawthorne, “appears, by

the fierceness of her beak and eye . . . to threaten mischief to

the inoffensive community,” was placed on the facade in 1826,

and the cupola added in 1853. Because the building had gone

over budget, the second floor was not finished, and in the introduction to The Scarlet Letter, “The Custom House,”

Hawthorne describes an “airy hall,” which “remains unfinished to this day . . . At one end of the room, in a recess, were

a number of barrels, piled one upon another, containing

bundles of official documents.” In order to connect the modern introduction, and its political commentary, with the seventeenth century story of Hester Prynne, Hawthorne pretends

to find her story among the documents in those piled barrels.

Hawthorne was appointed Surveyor of the Port of Salem in

1846 and worked in this building for almost four years (see

page 11 for the story of his dismissal). As Surveyor, Hawthorne

supervised the weighing and measuring of cargoes, and the

stencil depicted here is the one that was used to mark, as

Hawthorne wrote, his name with “black paint, on pepperbags, and baskets of anatto, and cigar-boxes, and bales of all

kinds of dutiable merchandise, in testimony that these commodities had paid the impost, and gone regularly through the

office.”

Across Derby Street from the Custom House stands Derby Wharf, the

longest of the three wharves that are today part of Salem Maritime

National Historic Site.

169 Derby Street, the Custom

House.

The stencil used by the Custom

House staff to mark incoming

cargoes. The stencil reads: SALEM /

N. HAWTHORNE/SURV/1847.

Courtesy National Park Service

1

Derby Wharf was begun in 1762 and extended to its present 1⁄2

mile length in 1806. Throughout the height of Salem’s China

Trade, Derby Wharf was one of the busiest of the nearly 50

wharves in Salem, and in the first decades of the nineteenth

25
century, its warehouses would have been filled with exotic

spices and other goods. However, by the 1840s, the view from

the window of Hawthorne’s office in the Custom House was

very different from what he saw as a boy visiting his aunt and

uncle Forrester a few houses down Derby Street. In 1850, after the spice trade with the East Indies had been replaced by

raw hides from West Africa, Hawthorne recorded his impressions of Derby Wharf in the introduction to The Scarlet Letter.

He states that it, “in the days of old King Derby, was a bustling

wharf,—but . . . is now burdened with decayed wooden warehouses, and exhibits few or no symptoms of commercial life;

except, perhaps, a bark or brig, half-way down its melancholy

length, discharging hides; or, nearer at hand, a Nova Scotia

schooner, pitching out her cargo of firewood.” It is, he

states,“a dilapidated wharf, which the tide often overflows,

and along which, at the base and in the rear of the row of

buildings, the track of many languid years is seen in a border

of unthrifty grass.”

To the left of the Custom House, across Orange Street, is a large

brick building at 180 Derby Street with a plaque reading “Home for

Aged Women. Presented by Robert Brookhouse 1861” mounted between the second and third story.

173 Derby Street, Derby

Wharf.

Photograph, c. 1893. Photographer

Unknown.

Today, the Custom House and Derby

Wharf are open to the public as

part of the property of Salem Maritime National Historic Site.

Courtesy National Park Service

2

The original section of this house, facing Derby Street, was

built for Benjamin W. Crowninshield about 1810. When

Hawthorne began work in the Custom House in 1846, the

house had been the home for over twenty years of General

James Miller, the Collector of Customs. Miller was a hero in

the war of 1812 and the former Governor of the Arkansas Territory. In 1846, he was 70 years old and in poor health.

Hawthorne grew to like the aged Collector, and his descriptions of Miller in “The Custom House” reflect that affection.

“It was only with the assistance of a servant,” Hawthorne

writes, “and by leaning his hand heavily on the iron balustrade, that he could slowly and painfully ascend the CustomHouse steps, and, with a toilsome progress across the floor,

attain his customary chair beside the fireplace.” Miller’s sprit,

according to Hawthorne, “could never, I conceive, have been

characterized by an uneasy activity; it must, at any period of

26
his life, have required an impulse to set him in motion; but,

once stirred up, with obstacles to overcome, and an adequate

object to be attained, it was not in the man to give out or fail.”

Although Hawthorne’s description of General Miller in “The

Custom House” was not in any way as negative as his descriptions of other members of the Custom House staff, Miller’s

family was offended by Hawthorne’s depiction of the frailty of

this former military hero.

Facing the Crowninshield House, turn to your left and proceed west

along Derby Street to Hawthorne Boulevard. Turn right on

Hawthorne Boulevard, then take the first left onto Charter Street.

Proceed down Charter Street until you reach the graveyard on the

left.

The gravestones of Hawthorne’s ancestors in this graveyard

were a continual presence in his mind. In “The Custom

House,” Hawthorne revisits these graves as an explanation for

having “within me a feeling for old Salem, which, for lack of a

better phrase, I must be content to call affection.” He describes his great-great-grandfather, John Hathorne, a judge

during the witch trials of 1692, who “inherited the persecuting

spirit, and made himself so conspicuous in the martyrdom of

the witches, that their blood may fairly be said to have left a

stain upon him. So deep a stain, indeed, that his old dry bones,

in the Charter Street burial-ground, must still retain it, if they

have not crumbled utterly to dust!”

Continue down Charter Street onto Front Street and through to the

corner of Front and Washington. Lawrence Place is the large brick

building on the right side of Front Street as you approach Washington Street

4

Charter Street

Old Burying Point Cemetery

180 Derby Street, the Benjamin W. Crowninshield

House, home of General

James Miller (1776-1851).

Portrait by Henry Willard, c.1830.

This house was probably one of the

last designed by Samuel McIntire

before his death in 1811. In 1861,

the house became the “Brookhouse

Home for Aged Women” and was expanded in 1906 and 1916. Today, the

Brookhouse Home still operates in

the Benjanim W. Crowninshield

House.

Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum

3

27
To connect the political details of “The Custom House” with

the rest of the story of The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne claimed

that he found the story among the papers of a previous Surveyor, along with many other notes on early Massachusetts

history. He states that “as a final disposition, I contemplate

depositing them with the Essex Historical Society.”

When Hawthorne began his stint as Surveyor, the Essex Historical Society was on the second floor of this building, over

the Athenaeum. According to the 1846 Salem City Directory,

“its object is to procure and preserve whatever relates to the

topography, antiquities, natural, civil, and ecclesiastical history

of the County of Essex. The library contains about 1200 volumes, principally historical works, newspapers, pamphlets, arranged according to subjects, public documents, etc. Bound

into volumes. They have a good collection of portraits and

curiosities, illustrative of the early history of the country.” In

1848, shortly before Hawthorne was forced out of his job as

Surveyor, the Essex Historical Society merged with the Essex

County Natural History Society to form the Essex Institute,

one of the two institutions that form the modern day Peabody

Essex Museum.

Cross Washington Street, turn left, and then take a right onto

Norman Street. Walk up Norman Street to Summer Street (Route

114) then continue straight across Summer Street onto Chestnut

Street. Proceed up Chestnut Street to number 18, at the corner of

Bott’s Court.

5 34 Front Street, Lawrence Place.

Home of the Essex Historical Society from 1841 to 1848

“We are residing in the most stately street in Salem,” wrote

Sophia Peabody Hawthorne to family friend Horatio Bridge in

December 1846. However, the Hawthorne’s house, which

they moved into after the birth of their second child, Julian, in

Boston in July 1846, was one of the smallest and oldest on this

street of grand mansions and wealthy families. “Our house is

much too small for our necessities,” Sophia continued. “My

husband has no study, and his life is actually wasted this win18 Chestnut Street, the

Hawthornes’ residence from

1846 to 1847

Photograph by Frank Cousins, c.

1891.

The bay window and entrance porch

were added by later owners, who

moved the entrance from the Bott’s

Court side of the building.

Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum

6

28
ter for want of one. He has not touched his desk since we

came to Salem, nor will not, until we can move to a more convenient dwelling.” In September 1847, the Hawthornes moved

to a larger house on Mall Street.

Turn right on Bott’s Court, and walk through to Essex Street. Take a

right on Essex past the present day home of the Salem Athenaeum,

which was built in 1910. Proceed two blocks to the traffic light at the

corner of North Street. On the northwest corner of Essex and North

Streets is the Jonathan Corwin House, familiarly known as the

“Witch House.”

Cross North Street, then turn left and walk up one block to Lynde

Street. Turn right on Lynde, and walk the length of Lynde Street to

Washington Street. Cross Washington Street onto Church Street.

On the right is the site of the Salem Lyceum.

When Hawthorne lived in Salem, there were a number of seventeenth-century houses still standing on the main streets of

the city. This house would have been familiar to Hawthorne,

not as it looks today in its restored state, but as it was depicted in this 1841 sketch by a Salem resident. Jonathan

Corwin, who purchased the unfinished house in 1675 and had

it completed, was a fellow judge with Hawthorne’s greatgreat-grandfather, John Hathorne, on the court that examined and tried the accused witches in 1692.

310 1⁄2 Essex Street, the

Jonathan Corwin House.

Pencil sketch, 1841, by Edward C. Cabot.

The gambrel roof that covers the

house in this drawing was added by

Sarah Corwin, the widow of Judge

Corwin’s grandson, in 1746.

Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum

7

In 1830, the Salem Lyceum was formed, and a building was

constructed to provide “for the public entertainment and instruction,” as the 1846 Salem City Directory stated. “Its hall is

35 Church Street, the Salem

Lyceum.

Photograph c. 1890. Photographer unknown.

Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum

8

29
one of the most convenient, although one of the earliest constructed edifices of the kind in the country. It affords accommodation to the community for independent courses of lectures, for musical concerts, for the occasional temporary

meetings of religious societies, and for a great variety of similar purposes.” The banked seats in the hall gave the audience a

good view of the stage, which in the first ten series of lectures

presented such luminaries as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Horace

Mann, Oliver Wendell Holmes, George Caitlin, and Charles

Francis Adams. Hawthorne was the corresponding secretary

of the Lyceum for the 1848-49 series of lectures and in his papers are some of the letters he wrote to invite his friends

Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson to lecture.

Hawthorne also invited his publisher, J. T. Fields, to deliver a

poem “on the evening when the Lyceum opens . . . in conjunction with a lecture from Mr. [Daniel] Webster.”

Continue straight on Church Street to the corner of St. Peter’s

Street and the large stone church on the corner.

In “The Custom House,” Hawthorne elegantly combines fact

and fiction. The story of The Scarlet Letter was made up by

Hawthorne, but Surveyor Jonathan Pue, among whose papers

Hawthorne pretends to “find” the story, was an actual person.

“I remembered to have read (probably in Felt’s Annals),”

writes Hawthorne, “a notice of the decease of Mr. Surveyor

Pue, about fourscore years ago; and likewise, in a newspaper

of recent times, an account of the digging up of his remains in

the little grave-yard of St. Peter’s Church, during the renewal

of that edifice. Nothing, if I rightly call to mind, was left of my

respected predecessor, save an imperfect skeleton, and some

fragments of apparel, and a wig of majestic frizzle; which, unlike the head that it once adorned, was in very satisfactory

preservation.” Hawthorne did, in fact, read of Pue’s wig and

waistcoat buttons in an article on June 8, 1833, in an article in

the Salem newspaper about the construction of this Gothic

Revival church that replaced the century-old wooden church

on this spot. On the corner of Brown and St. Peter’s Street,

behind the iron fence, the gravestone of Surveyor Jonathan

Pue can be seen today.

24 St. Peter Street, St.

Peter’s Church.

Watercolor, 1832-1833 by G.

A. Perkins.

This is the 1733 building that was

replaced in 1833 by the stone Gothic

Revival structure that stands on the

same spot today.

Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum

9

32
Continue straight on Brown Street, past the statue of Salem founder

Roger Conant on your right, and onto Washington Square North.

Two blocks beyond the statue, turn left on Mall Street and proceed

up the street to number 10 Mall Street.

In September 1847, the Hawthornes moved into this house on

Mall Street. Sophia was very pleased with the house: “all the

rooms face the sun and we shall bask in sunshine all winter,”

she wrote to her mother. The greatest advantage, however,

over the Chestnut Street house was that Hawthorne would

have a study on the third floor. “He will be as quiet up there

as if among the stars . . . He has now lived in the nursery a

year without a chance for one hour’s uninterrupted musing,

and without his desk being once opened.” Also, the house was

large enough to allow Hawthorne’s mother and sisters to join

the rest of the family, but still have their own set of rooms.

“Mrs. Hawthorne’s remainder of life,” wrote Sophia, “will be

glorified by the presence of these children and her son. I am

so glad to win her out of that Castle Dismal and from the mysterious chamber, into which . . . the sun never shines. Into

these rooms in Mall Street it blazes without ceremony or

stint.” This house was also the site of Hawthorne’s harshest

trials and greatest triumph, for it was while the family was living here in 1848 that Hawthorne found that his political enemies were trying to get him fired, and as he fought to keep

his job during the early summer of 1849 his mother became

seriously ill. Hawthorne received word on June 8 that he had

been fired, and Elizabeth Manning Hawthorne died on July 31,

1849. He stopped fighting for his job in August of that year,

perhaps because of his mother’s death, or perhaps because he

was focused on a new project: The Scarlet Letter, a story into

which he poured all the rage and frustration of that summer.

Hawthorne began the book in late summer 1849, and completed it in February 1850. “It is either very good or very bad –

I don’t know which,” he told his publisher.

14 Mall Street, the last residence in Salem of the

Hawthornes.

Photograph, c. 1880.

Photographer unknown.

Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum

10

33
The Mall Street house was Hawthorne’s last residence in Salem, and it is the last stop on the tour.

To return to Hawthorne Boulevard, retrace your

steps down Mall Street and to the right around

Salem Common.

Nathaniel, Sophia, and their children Una and Julian left Salem in 1850, shortly before the publication of The Scarlet Letter

and only rarely returned in the next 14 years. The family lived

in Lenox, Massachusetts, briefly before returning to Concord

and purchasing The Wayside.

In 1853, Hawthorne was appointed Consul to Liverpool, England, and the family (with the addition of the youngest child

Rose) spent the next seven years in Europe. The Hawthornes

returned to The Wayside in 1860, and four years later

Nathaniel Hawthorne died, on May 18, 1864, in Plymouth,

New Hampshire, while on a trip with his lifelong friend President Franklin Pierce.

32
Other Sites in Salem to Visit

There are several other sites in the city of Salem important

to Hawthorne’s life and writings, but outside the central

section of the city. For those visitors who wish to see these

sites, here are driving directions from the National Park

Service Visitor Center.

Manning House and Hawthorne Cottage, Dearborn Street

In 1824, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s uncle Robert Manning

built a house at number 33 Dearborn Street, in North Salem. Four years later, Manning built a cottage next door for

his sister, Elizabeth Manning Hathorne, and her family,

who lived in the cottage at 31 Dearborn Street from 1828 to

1832, when they returned to the Manning house on Herbert

Street. The cottage at number 31 was later moved across the

street to 26 Dearborn Street.

From the National Park Service Visitor Center on New Liberty Street, take a left on Brown Street and a right on St. Peter Street. At the end of St. Peter Street, take a left onto

Bridge Street (Rt. 107). Proceed along Bridge Street, and

follow the right exit onto Rt. 114. Go over the bridge, and

take the fourth right onto Dearborn Street.

Gallows Hill

According to local legend, Gallows Hill was the site of the

execution of those accused of witchcraft during the trials of

1692. In “Alice Doane’s Appeal,” Hawthorne describes visiting the place: “this was the field where superstition won

her darkest triumph; the high place where our fathers set up

their shame, to the mournful gaze of generations far remote. The dust of martyrs was beneath our feet. We stood

on Gallows Hill.”

From the National Park Service Visitor Center on New Liberty Street, take a left on Brown Street and a right on St. Peter Street. At the end of St. Peter Street, take a left onto

Bridge Street (Rt. 107). Follow Rt. 107 until you see signs on

your right to Gallows Hill Park, approximately 1.5 miles past

the train station.

Winter Island

At the end of the Salem peninsula is Winter Island, where

the ruins of Fort Pickering can still be seen. Hawthorne often walked to Winter Island during his years in Salem.

From the National Park Service Visitor Center, take a right

on Brown Street and then a right on Hawthorne Blvd. Take

a left on Derby Street, and follow Derby Street until you see

the signs for Winter Island.

Text and design by Emily A. Murphy,

Park Ranger, Salem Maritime National Historic Site

The author would like to thank:

The staff of the Phillips Library,

Photo Services, and American Decorative Arts of the Peabody Essex Museum; the staff of Photo Services of

Harvard Univeristy Art Museums,

and the Registrar’s Office of the

American Textile History Museum for

their invaluable assistance with the

graphics and research for this

project.

Additional assistance was provided

by: Doris Swofford, Dorothy Ahern,

Bob Grant, Madalene Axford

Murphy, Thomas P. Murphy, and the

staff of the National Park Service at

Salem Maritime National Historic Site

and Minute Man National Historical

Park.

27 Union Street

The Brown Building

10 1⁄2-12 Herbert Street

188 Derby Street

57 Turner Street

94 Washington Square

East

Salem Common

54 Charter Street

Walking Tour 1:

Relations and Relationships

The Gardner-Pingree House

The Old Burying Point

Cemetery

Lawrence Place

Riley Plaza

The Daniel Low Building

Walking Tour 2:

Salem in Print

The Old Town Pump

Memorial Fountain

Salem City Hall

Washington and Federal

Streets

East India Marine Hall

The Custom House

Derby Wharf

The Benjamin W.

Crowninshield House

Old Burying Point Cemetery

Lawrence Place

18 Chestnut Street

The Witch House

The Salem Lyceum

St. Peter’s Church

14 Mall Street

Walking Tour 3:

The Custom House

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

On the cover:

Portrait of Nathaniel Hawthorne by Charles Osgood, 1840

Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum

Salem Maritime National Historic Site

is one of many historic sites that can

be found in Essex County, Massachusetts. In 1996, Congress designated

Essex County as a National Heritage

Area in order to enhance, preserve

and encourage awareness of the

county’s historic, cultural and natural

resources and traditions. For more information, look at the ENHA website:

http://www.essexheritage.org/