About Sophia Peabody Hawthorne
Dates: September 21, 1809 - February 26, 1871
Occupation: painter, writer, educator, journal writer, artist, illustrator
Known for: publishing notebooks of her husband, Nathaniel Hawthorne; one of the Peabody sisters
Also known as: Sophia Amelia Peabody Hawthorne
Background, Family:
- Mother: Eliza Palmer Peabody
- Father: Nathaniel Peabody
- Peabody Children:
- Elizabeth Palmer Peabody: May 16, 1804 - January 3, 1894
- Mary Tyler Peabody Mann: November 16, 1807 - February 11, 1887
- Nathaniel Cranch Peabody: born 1811
- George Peabody: born 1813
- Wellington Peabody: born 1815
- Catherine Peabody: (died in infancy)
Education:
- well-educated privately and in schools run by her mother and two older sisters
Marriage, Children:
- husband: Nathaniel Hawthorne (married July 9, 1842; noted writer)
- children:
- Una Hawthorne (March 3, 1844 - 1877)
- Julian Hawthorne (June 2, 1846 - 1934)
- Rose Hawthorne Lathrop (Mother Mary Alphonsa Lathrop) (May 20, 1851 - July 9, 1926)
More About Sophia Peabody Hawthorne:
Sophia Amelia Peabody Hawthorne was the third daughter and third child of the Peabody family. She was born after the family settled in Salem, Massachusetts, where her father practiced dentistry.
With a father who had originally been a teacher, a mother who sometimes ran small schools, and two older sisters who taught, Sophia received a wide-ranging and deep education in traditional academic subjects at home and in those schools run by her mother and sisters. She was a lifelong voracious reader, as well.
Starting at age 13, Sophia also started having debilitating headaches, which, from descriptions, were likely migraines. She was often an invalid from that age until her marriage, though she did manage to study drawing with an aunt, and then studied art with several Boston area (male) artists.
While also teaching with her sisters, Sophia supported herself by copying paintings. She is credited with noted copies of Flight Into Egypt and a portrait of Washington Allard, both on display in the Boston area.
From December 1833 to May 1835, Sophia, with her sister Mary, went to Cuba, thinking this might bring relief from Sophia's health problems. Mary served as a governess with the Morell family in Havana, Cuba, while Sophia read, wrote and painted. While she was in Cuba, a landscape Sophia painted was exhibited at the Boston Athenaeum, an unusual accomplishment for a woman.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
On her return, she privately distributed her "Cuba Journal" to friends and family. Nathaniel Hawthorne borrowed a copy from the Peabody home in 1837, and likely used some of the descriptions in his own stories.
Hawthorne, who had led a relatively isolated life living with his mother in Salem from 1825 to 1837, formally met Sophia and her sister, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, in 1836. (They had probably seen each other as children, as well, living about a block apart.) While some thought that Hawthorne's connection was with Elizabeth, who published three of his children's stories, he was drawn to Sophia.
They were engaged by 1839, but it was clear that his writing could not support a family, so he took a position at the Boston Custom House and then explored the possibility in 1841 of living at the experimental utopian community, Brook Farm. Sophia resisted the marriage, thinking herself too ill to be a good partner. In 1839, she provided an illustration as the frontispiece of an edition of his The Gentle Boy, and in 1842 illustrated the second edition of Grandfather's Chair.
Sophia Peabody married Nathaniel Hawthorne on July 9, 1842, with James Freeman Clarke, a Unitarian minister, presiding. They rented the Old Manse in Concord, and began family life. Una, their first child, a daughter, was born in 1844. In March 1846, Sophia moved with Una to Boston to be near her doctor, and their son Julian was born in June.
They moved to a house in Salem; by this time, Nathaniel had won an appointment from President Polk as a surveyor at the Salem Custom House, a Democratic patronage position which he lost when Taylor, a Whig, won the White House in 1848. (He got his revenge for this firing with his portrayal of the "Custom-House" in The Scarlet Letter and Juge Pyncheon in The House of the Seven Gables.)
With his firing, Hawthorne turned to full-time writing, turning out his first novel, The Scarlet Letter, published in 1850. To help with the family's finances, Sophia sold hand-painted lampshades and firescreens. The family then moved in May to Lenox, Massachusetts, where their third child, a daughter, Rose, was born in 1851. From November 1851 to May 1852, the Hawthornes moved in with the Mann family, the educator Horace Mann and his wife, Mary, who was Sophia's sister.
