SOURCE: "Ancestral Matters," in Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife: A Biography, James R. Osgood and Company, 1885, pp. 1-38.

In this excerpt from a work written in 1884, Julian Hawthorne (the son of Nathaniel Hawthorne) provides a short commentary on John Hathorne and reviews his career as a judge.

[William Hathorne's] successor was his son John, the fifth of eight children, who lived to enjoy the sinister renown of having, in his capacity of Judge, examined and condemned to death certain persons accused of witchcraft,—one of whom, according to tradition, invoked a heavy curse upon him and upon his children's children. In the book of Court records of that period, under date of the 24th of March, 1691, there is entered a transcript of the examination of "Rebekah Nurse, at Salem village," from which I extract the following dialogue between John Hathorne, Rebekah, and others:—

Mr. Hathorne.—'What do you...