Nathaniel Hawthorne Birthplace

The Nathaniel Hawthorne Birthplace is the home where American author Nathaniel Hawthorne was born. It is located at 27 Hardy Street but accessible through 54 Turner Street, Salem, Massachusetts. The house is now a nonprofit museum along with the House of the Seven Gables immediately adjacent; an admission fee is charged.HistoryThe house, originally standing at 27 Union Street, was built sometime between 1730 and 1745 for a Boston mariner named Joshua Pickman. The land had been deeded to Pickman by his father-in-law Joseph Hardy, and may have recycled structural timbers from a 17th-century Pickman house that earlier stood on its site. Hawthorne's grandfather Daniel Hathorne (the "w" was not yet added to the family name) lived here with his wife Rachel Phelps as early as 1765. He purchased the building in 1772.After a courtship of more than six years, Nathaniel Hathorne Sr. married Elizabeth Clarke Manning on August 2, 1801, when the new Mrs. Hathorne was already pregnant. She had known the family for many years; only a small garden separated her own family house from the Hathorne's Union Street home. Unable to afford a home of their own, the couple moved into the Union Street house, where the groom's widowed mother and three unmarried siblings already lived. The Mannings, Hawthorne's maternal family, were wealthier and, by the time of the Hathornes' wedding, had bought most of the property on Union Street and Herbert Street.Hawthorne was born in the house on July 4, 1804, and lived in the house until his father died at sea when the future author was four years old. The family then moved into property owned by the Mannings on Herbert Street. Sophia Peabody, who would eventually become the author's wife, moved with her family in 1812 to a home on Union Street at the Essex Street corner. The Hawthornes as a married couple would later live in Salem at 18 Chestnut Street (where son Julian Hawthorne was born) and 14 Mall Street (where The Scarlet Letter was written).