Nathaniel Hawthorne was born to Elizabeth Clarke Manning Hathorne and Nathaniel Hathorne Sr. He was the second child and only son of three children. He was between his older sister Elizabeth, 2 years old at the time, and Maria Louisa, who would be born 4 years later.
Nathaniel’s father was a seaman, constantly on the water, and captain of a vessel, and was reported dead in 1808 of yellow fever in Suriname when Nathaniel was 4 years old. He grew with a good education and was able to attend Bowdoin College in 1821 where he would meet many future authors and country officials.
While there, he met and became fast friends with Franklin Peirce, who would later become the 14th president, along with the authors Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Herman Melville, and …show more content…
The two became friends and talked often and on September 21, 1809 he happily married Sophia Amelia Peabody in Boston.
After marrying Sophia, they both moved into “The Old Manse”, where they stayed for several years. The house inspired several works of his, including most of the collection of Mosses from an Old Manse.
In 1844, 5 years after marriage, Nathaniel and Sophia had their first daughter, Una, who they named in reference to the book The Faeirie Queene, which displeased many family members. Una would later become the inspiration for Pearl, the daughter of Hester in The Scarlet Letter. The child’s adventures would become the basis for many of Pearl’s antics.
Not long after Una’s birth they moved back to Salem in order to be closer to family, and their second child, Julian was born. When he was born, Hawthorne wrote to his sister Louisa telling her, “A small troglodyte made his appearance here at ten minutes to six o'clock this morning, who claimed to be your nephew.” 5 years after Julian was born, they had Rose in Lenox, Massachusetts.
Hawthorne was good friends with Herman Melville, and Melville’s story, Moby Dick, was dedicated to