In the
Introductory to , Hawthorne writes about his progenitor from Salem,
Massachusetts:
He was a soldier, legislator, judge; he was
a ruler in the Church; he had all the Puritanic traits, both good and evil. He was likewise a
bitter persecutor; as witness the Quakers, who have remembered him in their histories, and
relate an incident of his hard severity towards a woman of their sect, which will last longer,
it is to be feared, than any record of his better deeds, although these were many. His son,
too, inherited the persecuting spirit, and made himself so conspicuous in the martyrdom of the
witches, that their blood may fairly be said to have left a stain upon him....
Planted deep, in the town's earliest infancy and chilhood,...the race has ever since
subsisted here; always, too, in respectability; never, so far as I have...
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