Two white horses pulled the hearse into Concord’s Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, a top-hatted driver at the reins. A band of mourners followed on foot as they made their way toward Authors’ Ridge.
Except for the bright sunshine, this scene wouldn’t seem out of place in a story by Nathaniel Hawthorne. But it happened a mere twenty years ago, on June 26, 2006. That was the day Hawthorne and his wife and daughter were reunited after his death separated them 142 years earlier.
On July 9, 1842, a small wedding took place at the bookstore of Elizabeth Peabody at 13 West Street in Boston. After a highly secretive three-year engagement, 38-year-old struggling novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne married 33-year-old Sophia Amelia Peabody, the younger sister of the bookstore owner.
