The Old Dutch Church & Cemetary National Historic Landmark.
Posted on 06/27/2006 8:08:24 AM PDT by presidio9
It was a Hawthorne family reunion, for the dead and the living.
About 40 descendants of Nathaniel Hawthorne gathered in Concord on Monday to watch as the remains of his wife and daughter, buried for more than a century in England, were interred in the family plot at the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery alongside the author.
"It's greatly significant to see the family reunited," said Alison Hawthorne Deming, 59, of Tucson, Ariz., Hawthorne's great-great-grandaughter.
"It's also great to get together different parts of the heritage. It's a beautiful celebration for us," said Deming, a professor of creative writing at the University of Arizona. "It's not something we imagined happening. These people have never all been together."
Hawthorne, author of "The Scarlet Letter" and "The House of the Seven Gables," died in New Hampshire in 1864. His wife, Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, moved to England with their three children and died there six years later. She and their daughter Una were buried at Kensal Green cemetery in London.
Hawthorne's daughter, Rose, returned to the United States and started a Catholic order dedicated to caring for cancer patients. The Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, based in Hawthorne, N.Y., had paid to maintain the Hawthorne graves in England.
But when cemetery officials told the nuns that the grave site needed costly repairs, the order arranged to have remains reburied in Concord instead.
On Monday, one modern casket containing the remains of mother and daughter was put on a horse-drawn 1860 wooden hearse and carried from a local funeral home through the town center to a church for the memorial service. About 40 family members and a group of nuns from the order followed the hearse in a procession.
A minister offered a brief prayer and recounted the Hawthornes' time living at the Old Manse, located walking distance from the Old North Bridge, where the "shot heard 'round the world" was fired, sparking the American Revolution.
The procession — which traced the path of Nathaniel Hawthorne's funeral procession — then moved back through town to the cemetery, about a quarter-mile away.
The burial, which was private, took place in the section of the cemetery known as Author's Ridge, not far from where writers Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson are buried.
Hawthorne historians say the author and his wife shared a passionate relationship. Many see Sophia's independence in Hawthorne's characters, including Hester Prynne, who is shunned by Puritanical villagers in "The Scarlet Letter" for having an affair and an illegitimate child.
"It was a great love story. It was one of the premier marriages in American literature," said Philip McFarland, 76, who wrote a book called "Hawthorne in Concord" and watched the procession with his wife, Patricia, from the Concord common.
McFarland said much of what is known of the Hawthornes' relationship comes from about 1,500 letters written by Sophia.
"It's a misfortune that they were separated in death," he said. "It's very satisfying to anyone who knows the story of the Hawthorne marriage that they're being reunited for eternity."
Genealogy bump
> I guess I was stuned by having to deal with "The Scarlet Letter" in junior high!
Read it again. You'll like it, I promise.
When we finished reading it in high school, all the girls filed into class with scarlet As pinned to their shirts. The English teacher was floored!
Nice job Linda...
The Old Dutch Church & Cemetary National Historic Landmark.
Cool link. Thanks.
"Garden of the Fitzi-Contini" is one of the best horror stories I can remember.
All I see is a red x. Need help with picture posting? ;)
Perhaps if you paid more attention during the Scooby-do catroons you would have known this!
(I didn't know this either.)
I *just* re-read "The Scarlet Letter" in a college senior-level English class -- American Fiction. I was STUNNED at the difference in my personal perception of the story as an adult. Living a life -- having a marriage and children -- makes a world of difference in one's perceptions and observations of Hester Prynne and the choices she makes.
I also learned tons more about Hawthorne, as well as Una. We read TSL as it related to Antonomian Controversy of 1636-1638 (and Hester essentially becoming Anne Hutchinson, Pearl being "the monstrous birth" and a slap at John Winthrop). Following the reading and discussion though, we read "The Faerie Queen" (Spencer) -- it was the first book that Hawthorne purchased with his own money.
In "The Faerie Queen" he read of Una. . .Una being the one true faith. She comes about in book 2 with the Redcrosse knight. Rather interesting read about doubt, perception and reality.
Hawthorne I believe was a brilliant man in so many ways. Glad to see his wife and Una brought back to rest with him. Fascinating family.
~B.
It was there for a while, then it disappeared. Weird.
"Young Goodman Browne", "The Celestical Railroad" is "starchy"? (sp?..been a while) Explain "starchy".
If you are going to read three books in your life, read the "Iliad", Shakespeare ( you pick ) and Moby Dick. Without a doubt Moby Dick is the greatest American novel ever written. I read it, the Scarlet Letter and others in high school. PETA has banned Moby Dick from schools due to cruelity to animals. It is the struggle of man, good and evil, God and the devil, civilized and uncivilized, the clash of cultures, man vs nature and Melville wrapped it up into the chase for the whale. He reached for the stars and they touched him with greatest.
Moby Dick was listed as one of the 10 most boring books in some survey I saw, along with Don Quioxte. I have to agree although the first few chapters of Don Quioxte were pretty funny.
"PETA has banned Moby Dick from schools due to cruelity (sic) to animals."
I certainly haven't heard that. What it is, is cruelty to kids in school. Moby Dick is a great book, I reread it every few years (that great first paragraph always pulls me in...), but it's not about whales. It's about obsession, and what it can do to a person. That's something we understand better by our forties than we do in our teens.
--Hawthorne I believe was a brilliant man in so many ways.
And a conservative by nature.
Or you are a pompous ass. No one has God's own taste in art although a lot of people pretend to.
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