the vicinity contained fifteen hundred acres. His connections were
distinguished, and his descendants have included many eminent persons.
The name, by male descent, disappeared for a time in this part of the
country; but in the last generation it was restored in the female
descent by an act of the Legislature, and is honorably borne by one of
our most respectable families, who inherit his blood, and cherish the
memorials which time has spared of their first American ancestor.

William Hathorne appears on the church records as early as 1636. He
died in June, 1681, seventy-four years of age. No one in our annals
fills a larger space. As soldier commanding important and difficult
expeditions, as counsel in cases before the courts, as judge on the
bench, and in innumerable other positions requiring talent and
intelligence, he was constantly called to serve the public. He was
distinguished as a public speaker, and is the only person, I believe,
of that period, whose reputation as an orator has come down to us. He
was an Assistant, that is, in the upper branch of the Legislature,
seventeen years. He was a deputy twenty years. When the deputies, who
before sat with the assistants, were separated into a distinct body,
and the House of Representatives thus came into existence, in 1644,
Hathorne was their first Speaker. He occupied the chair, with
intermediate services on the floor from time to time, until raised to
the other House. He was an inhabitant of Salem Village, having his
farm there, and a dwelling-house, in which he resided when his
legislative, military, and other official duties permitted. His son
John, who succeeded him in all his public honors, also lived on his
own farm in the village a great part of the time. The name is
indelibly stamped on the hills and meadows of the region, as it was in
the civil history of that age, and has been in the elegant literature
of the present.