Hawthorne family reburied next to author
AP
By Ken Maguire
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Tucson, Arizona Published: 06.27.2006
CONCORD, Mass. — 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, Hawthorne's great-great-granddaughter.
"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, 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.
On Monday, one modern casket containing the remains of mother and daughter was put on a horse-drawn 1860 wooden hearse and carried through the town center to a church for the memorial service.
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.
By Ken Maguire
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Tucson, Arizona Published: 06.27.2006
CONCORD, Mass. — 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, Hawthorne's great-great-granddaughter.
"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, 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.
On Monday, one modern casket containing the remains of mother and daughter was put on a horse-drawn 1860 wooden hearse and carried through the town center to a church for the memorial service.
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.
posted by Local Ale | 2:06 PM
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