Nathaniel, the only son, spent his early years in Salem and in Maine. Nathaniel's father, a sea captain, died in 1808, leaving his wife and three children dependent on relatives. With deep and unbreakable ties to Salem, he nevertheless found its physical and cultural environment as chilly as its prevalent east wind. Thus the Pyncheons and the Maules of Hawthorne's Salem novel The House of the Seven Gables represent the two different faces of his ancestors, and his feelings about his birthplace were mixed. Further, the family had over the generations gradually declined from its early prominence and prosperity into relative obscurity and indigence. The Hathornes (Nathaniel added the "w" to the name) had been involved in religious persecution with their first American forebear, William, and John Hathorne was one of the three judges at the 17th-century Salem witchcraft trials. Two aspects of his heritage were especially to affect his imagination. His ancestors included Puritan magnates, judges, and seamen. Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Mass., on July 4, 1804, into the sixth generation of his Salem family. The work of American fiction writer Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) was based on the history of his Puritan ancestors and the New England of his own day but, in its "power of blackness, " has universal significance.
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