Can’t explain Pike.
It struck to my heart that he had come to inform us of some accident. “Yes.” “What was the matter?” “She was drowned.” “Where?” “On the Hudson, in the ‘Henry Clay’!” He then came in, and my husband shut himself in his study. By the 1840s, he was a well known author, but … Wish I had more to write!
I called from the window, “Welcome, Mr. Dike!” He glanced up, but did not see me nor smile. This entry was posted on Saturday, April 4th, 2020 at 7:07 am and tagged with #SalemSuffrageSaturday, Andrew Jackson Downing, Art, Disasters, Louisa Hawthorne, maritime history, Nathaniel Hawthorne, New York Times, Sophia Hawthorne, Women's History and posted in History, Salem, Women's History. The news came in an appalling way. Unlike the high-style Georgian features in The House of the Seven Gables, the Hawthorne Birthplace is a modest example of this style. Website designed and developed by Sperling Interactive.
Pierce and other friends in the Democratic Party got the job of Surveyor for Hawthorne (who had worked for the Customs Service in Boston a few years earlier) in 1846. In a very telling and consequential mid-nineteenth-century moment, Louisa found herself, after a lifetime of service to the various family members in Salem whom she was also quite dependent on in her single state, and after a rare vacation to that celebrated hotspot Saratoga Springs, on board the paddle-wheel steamboat Henry Clay on its journey from Albany to New York City on July 28, 1852 when a ravenous fire on board forced her to choose: conflagration or the deep, dark Hudson. When I did, there was no Mr. Dike. Hawthorne’s parents had grown up as neighbors and were married much to the chagrin of his paternal grandparents. What a sad end for Louisa Hawthorne in the famous Henry Clay steamboat tragedy of which there were so many at the time. who suffered a similar fate on the Potomac. His father was a sea captain who died while on a voyage to the Pacific in 1808, and Nathaniel was raised by his mother, with the help of relatives. Sometimes this is difficult to do, as the sources simply aren’t there, and sometimes you can only illuminate these women through their association with something or someone who leaves a source-strewn trail. The siblings were close, as Nathaniel’s letters testify: Louisa was the first person he had written to after his marriage to Sophia Peabody, asking her to come and visit them at the Old Manse, and just before her death, he had written and asked her to come and live with his family permanently. Copyright © 2020 Streets of Salem by Donna A. Seger, This entry was posted on Saturday, April 4th, 2020 at 7:07 am and tagged with. Sophia Hawthorne recounted Mr. Dike’s appearance in a letter to her mother a few days later: This morning we received the shocking intelligence that Louisa Hawthorne was lost in the destruction of the steamer “Henry Clay” on the Hudson, on Wednesday afternoon, July 27. The Nathaniel Hawthorne Birthplace is the home where American author Nathaniel Hawthorne was born. She choose the latter, and drowned, in one of the River’s worst maritime disasters, in the conspicuous company of former NYC Mayor Stephen Allen, landscape architect Andrew Jackson Downing, the granddaughter of a President and the sister of a Senator, among many other victims. I said, “Go to the western piazza, for the front door is locked.” I continued to dress my hair, and it was a considerable time before I went down. Thanks for telling the story of this tragedy. Thank you for not passing by Louisa. She has been at Saratoga Springs and with Mr. Dike for a fortnight, and was returning by way of New York, and we expected her here for a long visit. Mr. Hawthorne opened the door with the strange feeling that he should grasp a hand of air. It wasn’t just the distinction or associations of some of the victims, it was the way they died. To make matters worse, the ship’s paddle wheels kept spinning, further imperiling those who did jump into the river. Their son Julian recalls in his memoirs that after receiving the news, Mr. Hawthorne went out, and was seen no more that day. I meant to “Dike” “Dyke” and then even “Pike” changes. They were all acquitted, but in August the Steamship Act of 1852 was passed in Congress, imposing inspections, regulations and licensing on the industry, and expressly outlawing racing, “to provide for the better security of the lives of passengers on board of vessels propelled in whole or in part by steam.” A tragic and consequential death, but what of Louisa’s life? But upon going to the piazza, there he stood unaccountably, without endeavoring to enter. Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on July 4, 1804, in a small house three blocks from the Custom House. It then belonged to my grandmother Hawthorne, who lived in one part of it. “Where is Mr. Dike?–I must then have seen his spirit,” said I. Unlike the high-style. He was born, according to his older sister Elizabeth, “in the chamber over that little parlor into which we looked, in that house on Union St. An American author most known for the novels The Scarlet Letter and The House of Seven Gables, Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on July 4, 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts. There we lived until 1808, when my father died, at Surinam. I’m sorry. What a tragedy! Mr. Pike, without a smile, deeply flushed, seemed even then not in his former body.
It rings a distant bell about another prominent politician of the era (maybe a vice president?) After the death of her husband, Elizabeth Clarke Manning Hathorne returned to her parents’ home with her three children, a move not uncommon for widows during this period. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story of adultery and betrayal in colonial America, The Scarlet Letter, is published. “Your sister Louisa is dead!” I thought he meant that his own sister was dead, for she also is called Louisa. Louisa was on this journey with her uncle John Dike, the husband of her maternal aunt Priscilla Manning, who survived the wreck and traveled directly to Concord to tell Nathaniel. This house is special due to the event that occurred within the four walls on July 4, 1804. At this point (July 30), Louisa’s body had not been recovered, but it was three days later, and Sophia then wrote to her sister Mary: I find that Louisa was not burned, but drowned.
He turned the pain, anger, and betrayal he felt into his first great novel, The Scarlet Letter. Nathaniel Hawthorne (July 4, 1804 – May 19, 1864) was an American novelist, dark romantic, and short story writer. Nathaniel Hawthorne, ca. Somewhat random but still timely posts about culture, history, and the material environment, from the perspectives of academia, Salem and beyond. So many women (and other “invisibles”) disappear, in the shadows of others’ “perpetual sunshine,” their small and seemingly inconsequential contributions in this world passed by.