THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE





CHAPTER I

SALEM AND THE HATHORNES: 1630-1800


The three earliest settlements on the New England coast were Plymouth,
Boston, and Salem; but Boston soon proved its superior advantages to
the two others, not only from its more capacious harbor, but also from
the convenient waterway which the Charles River afforded to the
interior of the Colony. We find that a number of English families, and
among them the ancestors of Gen. Joseph Warren and Wendell Phillips,
who crossed the ocean in 1640 in the "good ship Arbella," soon
afterward migrated to Watertown on Charles River for the sake of the
excellent farming lands which they found there. Salem, however,
maintained its ascendency over Plymouth and other neighboring harbors
on the coast, and soon grew to be the second city of importance in the
Colony during the eighteenth century, when the only sources of wealth
were fishing, shipbuilding, and commerce. Salem nourished remarkably.
Its leading citizens became wealthy and developed a social aristocracy
as cultivated, as well educated, and, it may also be added, as
fastidious as that of Boston itself. In this respect it differed widely