161 years ago, on May 19, 1864, Nathaniel Hawthorne died at the age of 59. He was in Plymouth, New Hampshire, on a vacation with former U.S. President Franklin Pierce, who had been a close friend to Hawthorne since they were students at Bowdoin College. 

His best writing years behind him, Hawthorne had been in declining health since returning to from a sojourn in Italy four years earlier. His refusal to embrace the abolitionist cause had strained his relations with his literary neighbors Emerson, Thoreau, and Alcott. His wife, the artist Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, encouraged Nathaniel to take the vacation in the hope that it would improve his state of mind and physical health. 

Hawthorne’s funeral was held at Concord’s First Parish. He held a dim view of religion generally, and there’s no evidence that he was ever a member of the First Parish, but it was the biggest room in town. His pallbearers included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott, and Henry Wordsworth Longfellow, the latter another Bowdoin College classmate. He was laid to rest on Authors’ Ridge in Concord’s Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.