Draft:Maria Louisa Hawthorne

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  • Comment: This is very essay-like and opinional, especially as the lack of inline citations makes it hard to know if it is the author's words or someone elses. Things like "she was a natural caregiver", "one fateful invitation", and "These letters also serve as a remembrance of her life, one who was dearly loved by her family and friends." are not neutral or encyclopedic. -- NotCharizard 🗨 13:39, 26 August 2025 (UTC)


Maria Louisa Hawthorne (January 9, 1808 - July 28, 1852) was the younger sister of Nathaniel Hawthorne, the author of short stories and novels including The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables and her sister, Elizabeth Manning Hawthorne. Maria Louisa was the family member to whom he corresponded when announcing important events in his life often addressing his letters to her with "My Dear Louisa" or "Dear L."[1] Dozens of her letters have survived and are archived in research libraries around the country. These letters serve as an important record for her brother's life, serving as a valuable resource for further research.[2]

Early Life

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Hawthorne was born Maria Louisa Hathorne at 27 Union Street in Salem, Massachusetts in the Rachel Hathorne house where her parents resided. She later changed her last name to Hawthorne, following her brother’s decision to do so. Her father, Nathaniel Hathorne, was a sailing ship captain who took routes to South America where he died of yellow fever in early 1808 shortly after her birth. Her mother, Elizabeth (Betsey) Clarke Manning Hathorne, was the daughter of Richard and Miriam Lord Manning. After her husband’s death, Elizabeth moved with her children from the Hathorne house to her parent’s home on Herbert Street in Salem.[3]

Hawthorne, often called Louisa by her family, was "a pleasant, refined, sensible, feminine personage, with considerable innate sociability of temperament."[1] She was called upon occasionally to assist with younger relatives or ailing older ones, once writing "Mrs. Manning is very ill, and I must put off coming to you".[1] Although the expectation was for young women to marry at the time, she did not.

Dependent upon her Manning relatives, Hawthorne lived with her mother, brother and sister, in various houses owned or built by her Mannings uncles in Salem, Massachusetts and Raymond, Maine:

  • 1808-1818: Manning home on Herbert Street in Salem, Massachusetts
  • 1818-1820: Lived with her mother and sister in Raymond, Maine
  • 1820-1821: Manning home on Herbert Street, to complete her schooling
  • 1821-1822: Lived with her mother in Raymond, Maine
  • 1822-1828: Manning home on Herbert Street
  • 1828-1832: Manning house built on Dearborn Street in Salem, Massachusetts
  • 1832-1847: Manning home on Herbert Street[3]

Later Years

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Hawthorne visited her brother and his wife, Sophia Peabody, and their children several times in subsequent years. "She was a delightful person to have in the house and her nephew and niece were ardently in love with her."[4] When her brother became financially able to fully support his mother and sisters, he invited them to live with his family in a rented home on Mall Street.[1] After their mother died in 1849, and her brother moved to Lenox, she and her sister, Elizabeth Manning Hawthorne, chose to live separately. Hawthorne remained in Salem while her sister moved to a rented room in Beverly.[3]

Death

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In the summer of 1852, Hawthorne traveled to Saratoga Springs, New York, with her uncle, John Dike, to drink the mineral waters. Afterward, they traveled down the Hudson River to New York City on the steamboat Henry Clay, a sidewheeler riverboat. Following a midday meal onboard, Hawthorne went to read in an after-cabin while her uncle left to go on deck.[5] About 3:00 p.m. approximately 10 miles north of New York City, a fire erupted in the mid-section of the steamboat. The pilot beached the Henry Clay onto a sandbank at Riverdale, New York. The bow of the steamboat was grounded while the aft section still floated in the deep river water.[5]

Dike, who had been at the bow, jumped off onto the shore. Hawthorne, still at the back of the boat, was trapped by the fire in the center of the steamboat. For two days Dike unsuccessfully searched for her at the disaster site. Dike telegraphed his wife, Priscilla, informing her that her niece had been lost.[1] Three days after the disaster her body was found floating close to the charred remnants of the steamboat with her name appearing on the lists printed in newspapers.[6] The inquest in Yonkers, New York, indicated that Hawthorne's remains were unrecognizable and were identified by her cousin, Robert Manning, from an embroidered "handkerchief marked 'H'"[7] and "a breast-pin, marked with the name of 'Rachel Forrester'",[7] her aunt. She was buried in the Manning plot of the Howard Street Cemetery in Salem, Massachusetts.

Legacy

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There are no known pictures, silhouettes or likenesses of Hawthorne's physical appearance; however, her letters provide an important insight to her brother's home life.

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e Hawthorne, Julian (1885). Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife (Vol. 1 2nd ed.). Boston: James R. Osgood and Company. pp. 5, 113, 126, 312–314, 452–456.
  2. ^ Hawthorne, Maria Louisa. "Digital Collection". Peabody Essex Museum.
  3. ^ a b c Hansen, Kris A. (2024). My Dear Sister: Nathaniel Hawthorne And His Sisters. Mountain Ash Press. pp. 26–28, 232. ISBN 978-1-952430-99-2.
  4. ^ Hawthorne, Julian (1903). Hawthorne and His Circle. New York and London: Harper & Brothers Publishers. p. 75.
  5. ^ a b Hansen, Kris A. (2004). Death Passage on the Hudson: The Wreck of the Henry Clay. Fleischmanns, NY: Purple Mountain Press, Ltd. ISBN 1-930098-56-1.
  6. ^ "List of the Dead". Vol. I, no. 272. New-York Daily Times. August 2, 1852.
  7. ^ a b "The Coroner's Inquests - Fourth Day". Vol. I, no. 272. New-York Daily Times. August 2, 1852.
  • Hawthorne, Julian. Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife Vol. II. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin and Company, The Riverside Press Cambridge (1884).
  • Bridge, Horatio. Personal Recollections of Nathaniel Hawthorne, London: Forgotten Books (2012). Originally published in 1893.
  • Hawthorne, Elizabeth Manning. A Life in Letters, edited by Cecile Anne de Rocher, Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press (2006).
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