Sophia Peabody

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Sophia Amelia Peabody (September 21, 1809–February 26, 1871) was a painter and illustrator born in Salem, Massachusetts. She also published her journals and various articles.

Peabody's father was the dentist Nathaniel Peabody, while her mother was the strong Unitarian Elizabeth Palmer. She had two brothers; her sisters were Elizabeth Palmer Peabody and Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Horace Mann's wife.

On July 9, 1842, she and her neighbor Nathaniel Hawthorne were married in Boston, five years after first meeting, by James Freeman Clarke, a coupling that would prove happy for both of them. Both were considered relatively old for marriage (she was 32 and he was five days past his 36th birthday). Immediately after their wedding, they moved into The Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts, a home they rented from the Rev. William Emerson. The next day, Hawthorne wrote to his sister Louisa: "We are as happy as people can be, without making themselves ridiculous, and might be even happier; but, as a matter of taste, we choose to stop short at this point."

Hawthorne had been pursuing Sophia Peabody as far back as a letter dated March 6, 1839.

Sophia had originally objected to marriage. Her health had been questionable since infancy and she was an occasional invalid. The possible reason for this was her dentist father prescribing a then-fashionable treatment for teething pains that included mercury.

They had three children: Una (b. March 3, 1844), Julian (b. May 22, 1846), and Rose (b. May 20, 1851).

[edit] Death, Burial and Reburial

Nathaniel Hawthorne died in 1864, and Sophia moved with her three children to England four years later in 1868 with her three children. In February 1871 she died of typhoid pneumonia, her oldest daughter Una soon following in 1877. Mother and daughter were buried in Kensal Green Cemetery in London, England.

Jullian Hawthorne went on to be a moderately successful autthor writting about his father and other miscellaneous works. He died in 1934.

Rose went on to found the Roman Catholic order of nuns, the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, based in Hawthorne, New York, where she died in 1926. Care for the graves of Sophia and Una fell to this organization. When the grave sites were in need of costly repair, it was suggested the remains be moved to the Hawthorne family plot in Concord, Massachusetts. In June 2006 the two were re-buried at the family plot in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. A funeral was held for the family's descendants with representatives from the Dominican Sisters and a public ceremony was held at The Old Manse to mark the occasion.