Hawthorne's Miss Betsey

How a little orphan was remembered in great American literature

Nov 26, 2024

Release Date: November 26, 2024

The year I turned 14, I asked my parents for a copy of The Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne for my birthday, all 563 gold-edged, leather-bound pages of it, and, lo and behold, they came through for me! I was thrilled. I spent that whole summer out on the lawn in front of our house reading. I was out on the lawn, of course, because the language and structure of Hawthorne’s writing was so intense, and so complex, that I had to build the sentences word by word, and hear them out loud to understand what he was saying.

It was a chore, but a delightful chore, indeed!

I worked my way through front to back, reading the classic novels, but also the short story collections and even the nonfiction, though, as I recall, they were not nearly as enjoyable.

At some point, I’m sure but don’t recall, I must have read Grandfather’s Chair, a charming jaunt through the Puritan history of early America. And, in reading it, I surely must have come across a little story titled, “The Pine-Tree Shillings” featuring Captain John Hull, mint-master of Massachusetts, and his young daughter named Betsey.

Like the other tales in Grandfather’s Tale, the story contained in “The Pine-Tree Shillings”is based on historical fact, however in this case, one key piece of the story has been changed. Captain Hull’s daughter’s name was Hannah.

Betsey, it turns out, was a little girl with story all her own.

I first learned of Betsey’s story when I found the following brief in the April 27, 1895, edition of the Biddeford-Sacro (ME) Journal.

Mrs. James L. Smith, who died Wednesday night at Watertown, Mass., and who was the mother of Mrs. F.M. Burnham of this city, was brought up in Hollis by and uncle of Nathaniel Hawthorne and was the “Little Betsy” referred to in his writings. ¹

My search was on.

I was able to find Francis Mansure Burnham in the 1880 census. He and his wife, Abbie, and their two children, Gertrude and William, were living in Biddeford, ME. And they owned a bookstore.

An 1881 Record of Birth for a third child, Ethel, confirmed Abbie’s maiden name was Smith, which eventually led me to the 1850 census where I found Abby and her parents, James and Elizabeth Smith, and her siblings, Susan, James and Sydney, living in Boston.

I located an 1893 Marriage Record for James, JR, which listed his parents as James Lord Smith and Elizabeth Ann Tarbox, and suddenly little Betsey had a name.

Elizabeth Ann Tarbox was born August 17, 1815, in Raymond, ME to Jeremiah Tarbox and his wife, Dorcas Plaisted. Betsey, as she was known, was the couple’s fifth and final child, them having already brought into the world two daughters, Isabella and Olive, and two sons, Jeremiah and Samuel. (It appears Olive died in childhood as no records of her have been located beyond her birth in 1812.)

In 1819, the Tarbox children were 10 (Isabella), 9 (Jeremiah), 5 (Samuel) and 3 (Betsey) and the family was living on a small spear of land between the villages of Raymond and Standish, ME just east of Sebago Lake. Times were tough for Betsey and her family, or, as one newspaper of the day put it, they were in “very necessitous circumstances”. ²

And then things got even worse.

On March 18, a violent storm hit the area, and, as snow began to pile up, Betsey’s father made the risky decision to walk five miles to the nearest neighbor and see if they could spare any food. He was successful in his task, however, on the walk home, the weather got worse. Within a mile of home and worn down by the weight of the bag and the cold and arduous journey, Jeremiah left the supplies against a tree, and fought his way through the ever-deepening snow.

Just 500 feet from the warmth and safety of home, Jeremiah’s strength gave out. Desperate, he cried out for help.

And, inside the house, his wife, Dorcas, heard him.

She piled the fire high with wood, told her four young children to be good, and headed out into the night in search of her husband.

She never returned. And neither did Jeremiah.

The four Tarbox children spent the night waiting, huddled together to stay warm.

In the morning, Isabella, the eldest, went outside and blew the dinner horn used to call workers in from the field, but no one came.

It would be three days before neighbors finally heard the horn and came to their aid. Along the way, they found Jeremiah and Dorcas up against a tree, hands clasped and frozen to death. ³

At the time of the tragedy, Nathaniel Hawthorne was 15 years old and living near Lake Sebago with his mother and two sisters. His father, a captain in the U.S. Navy, had died 11 years earlier in 1808, leaving Nathaniel’s mother, Elizabeth, distraught and unable to care for her children. Her brother, Richard Manning, had stepped up to help, moving from New Hampshire to Raymond to manage the Hawthorne family estate and oversee the education of the children, especially young Nathaniel.

Newspapers of the day indicate that Isabella, Jeremiah, Samuel and Betsey were brought to relatives following the deaths of their parents, and that may well be true. Their mother, Dorcus, had a number of siblings, all of whom were married, lived in the area and had children around the same ages as the four Tarbox children. I haven’t been able to find any of the Tarbox kids in any of the next census records. However, records have been found that suggest three-year-old Betsey had been taken in by Richard Manning at some point.

A Copy of an Old Record of Birth for her includes the following notation:

Living at Richard Manning’s in 1829. Her parents were frozen to death on Standish UNK near Raymond UNK. ⁴

Although the 1830 census does not list her by name, Betsey does seem to be included in Richard Manning’s household, which includes one White Free Male 40-49 (Richard) one White Free female 30-39 (his wife, Susannah) and one Free White Female 10-14 (Betsey).

The connections between Betsey, Richard and Nathaniel are supported by multiple newspaper articles of the day as well as the 1895 notice of Betsey’s funeral titled, “Death of ‘Little Betsy.’ The Heroine of one of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Works of Maine Woman.”

Watertown, Mass., April 26 – the funeral of Mrs. James L. Smith, aged 70 years, who died last Wednesday night at the home of her son-in-law, joseph White, was held Friday afternoon. The body was taken to Biddeford, ME., for interment. Mrs. Smith was born in Hollis, Me., and was brought up by an uncle of Nathaniel Hathorne, and she was the Little Betsey he referred to in one of his writings. ⁵

In 1821, Richard enrolled his nephew at Bowdoin College, some 30 miles west of Raymond in Brunswick, ME. There Nathaniel became lifelong friends with future U.S. President Franklin Pierce, and great American poet Hendry Wadsworth Longfellow. By his own account, Nathaniel was an unmotivated student, but he did manage to graduate in 1825.

He also gathered material for his first book, Fanshawe: A Tale, which was published in 1828 and heavily based on his time at Bowdoin.

Over the next decade, Nathaniel would write a number of short stories including classics like “The Minister’s Black Veil”, and also two short story collections, Twice-Told Tales and Legends of the Province House, both of which, like Fanshawe: A Tale, drew from his own experiences and local stories he had heard.

On January 1, 1841, Nathaniel published another collection of short stories titled, Grandfather’s Chair, and included in that collection was a story titled, “The Pine-Tree Shillings”. In the Author’s Preface to the collection, Nathaniel noted that each of the stories was based on historical facts and events which had taken place in early Massachusettes, however added:

“The author, it is true, has sometimes assumed the license of filling up the outline of history with details for which he has none but imaginative authority, but which, he hopes, do not violate nor give a false coloring to the truth.”

Such is the case with the appearance of Betsey Tarbox in “The Pine-Tree Shillings”

By the time “The Pine-Tree Shillings” was published in 1841, Betsey was a grown woman of 25 and living in Boston. Richard had passed away a decade earlier, but it’s not clear if Betsey had stayed with Richard’s widow, Susannah, attended school or even gone to work following his death. She was just 15 in 1831, and teenagers had not yet been invented. Susannah had remarried two years after Richard’s death and become a stepmom to her husband’s five young children, so my best guess is Betsey was, once again, on her own.

In February of 1841, she appeared before the Boston magistrate requesting a name change, likely as a result of her marriage to James Lord Smith, a 23-year-old Boston grocer. The couple would go on to have four children between 1846 and 1852, including their daughter, Abby, who would one day marry a family of booksellers, and own and operate a popular bookstore in Biddeford, ME which, it can be assumed, carried Nathaniel Hawthorne’s book that referenced her mother.

Betsey passed away on August 24, 1895 at the age of 80. The story of her early life may have been lost to time, but her name will be forever remembered, thanks to Nathaniel Hawthorne, her guardian’s nephew and one of American’s most famous and beloved storytellers.

Copyright 2024 Lori Olson White

“The Pine-Tree Shillings

The Captain John Hull aforesaid was the mint-master of Massachusetts, and coined all the money that was made there. This was a new line of business; for, in the earlier days of the colony, the current coinage consisted of gold and silver money of England, Portugal, and Spain. These coins being scarce, the people were often forced to barter their commodities instead of selling them.

For instance, if a man wanted to buy a coat, he perhaps exchanged a bear-skin for it. If he wished for a barrel of molasses, he might purchase it with a pile of pine boards. Musket-bullets were used instead of farthings. The Indians had a sort of money, called wampum, which was made of clam-shells; and this strange sort of specie was likewise taken in payment of debts by the English settlers. Bank-bills had never been heard of. There was not money enough of any kind, in many parts of the country, to pay the salaries of the ministers; so that they sometimes had to take quintals of fish, bushels of corn, or cords of wood, instead of silver or gold.

As the people grew more numerous, and their trade one with another increased, the want of current money was still more sensibly felt. To supply the demand, the General Court passed a law for establishing a coinage of shillings, sixpences, and threepences. Captain John Hull was appointed to manufacture this money, and was to have about one shilling out of every twenty to pay him for the trouble of making them.

Hereupon all the old silver in the colony was handed over to Captain John Hull. The battered silver cans and tankards, I suppose, and silver buckles, and broken spoons, and silver buttons of worn-out coats, and silver hilts of swords that had figured at court,--all such curious old articles were doubtless thrown into the melting-pot together. But by far the greater part of the silver consisted of bullion from the mines of South America, which the English buccaneers--who were little better than pirates--had taken from the Spaniards, and brought to Massachusetts.

All this old and new silver being melted down and coined, the result was an immense amount of splendid shillings, sixpences, and threepences. Each had the date, 1652, on the one side, and the figure of a pine-tree on the other. Hence they were called pine-tree shillings. And for every twenty shillings that he coined, you will remember, Captain John Hull was entitled to put one shilling into his own pocket.

The magistrates soon began to suspect that the mint-master would have the best of the bargain. They offered him a large sum of money if he would but give up that twentieth shilling which he was continually dropping into his own pocket. But Captain Hull declared himself perfectly satisfied with the shilling. And well he might be; for so diligently did he labor, that, in a few years, his pockets, his money-bags, and his strong box were overflowing with pine-tree shillings. This was probably the case when he came into possession of Grandfather's chair; and, as he had worked so hard at the mint, it was certainly proper that he should have a comfortable chair to rest himself in.

When the mint-master had grown very rich, a young man, Samuel Sewell by name, came a-courting to his only daughter. His daughter — whose name I do not know, but we will call her Betsey — was a fine, hearty damsel, by no means so slender as some young ladies of our own days. On the contrary, having always fed heartily on pumpkin-pies, doughnuts, Indian puddings, and other Puritan dainties, she was as round and plump as a pudding herself. With this round, rosy Miss Betsey did Samuel Sewell fall in love. As he was a young man of good character, industrious in his business, and a member of the church, the mint-master very readily gave his consent.

"Yes, you may take her," said he, in his rough way, "and you'll find her a heavy burden enough!"

On the wedding day, we may suppose that honest John Hull dressed himself in a plum-colored coat, all the buttons of which were made of pine-tree shillings. The buttons of his waistcoat were sixpences; and the knees of his small-clothes were buttoned with silver threepences. Thus attired, he sat with great dignity in Grandfather's chair; and, being a portly old gentleman, he completely filled it from elbow to elbow. On the opposite side of the room, between her bridemaids, sat Miss Betsey. She was blushing with all her might, and looked like a full-blown peony, or a great red apple.

There, too, was the bridegroom, dressed in a fine purple coat and gold-lace waistcoat, with as much other finery as the Puritan laws and customs would allow him to put on. His hair was cropped close to his head, because Governor Endicott had forbidden any man to wear it below the ears. But he was a very personable young man; and so thought the bridemaids and Miss Betsey herself.

The mint-master also was pleased with his new son-in-law; especially as he had courted Miss Betsey out of pure love, and had said nothing at all about her portion. So, when the marriage ceremony was over, Captain Hull whispered a word to two of his men-servants, who immediately went out, and soon returned, lugging in a large pair of scales. They were such a pair as wholesale merchants use for weighing bulky commodities; and quite a bulky commodity was now to be weighed in them.

"Daughter Betsey," said the mint-master, "get into one side of these scales."

Miss Betsey — or Mrs. Sewell, as we must now call her — did as she was bid, like a dutiful child, without any question of the why and wherefore. But what her father could mean, unless to make her hushand pay for her by the pound (in which case she would have been a dear bargain), she had not the least idea.

"And now," said honest John Hull to the servants, "bring that box hither."

The box to which the mint-master pointed was a huge, square, iron-bound, oaken chest; it was big enough, my children, for all four of you to play at hide-and-seek in. The servants tugged with might and main, but could not lift this enormous receptacle, and were finally obliged to drag it across the floor. Captain Hull then took a key from his girdle, unlocked the chest, and lifted its ponderous lid. Behold! it was full to the brim of bright pine-tree shillings, fresh from the mint; and Samuel Sewell began to think that his father-in-law had got possession of all the money in the Massachusetts treasury. But it was only the mint-master's honest share of the coinage.

Then the servants, at Captain Hull's command, heaped double handfuls of shillings into one side of the scales, while Betsey remained in the other. Jingle, jingle, went the shillings, as handful after handful was thrown in, till, plump and ponderous as she was, they fairly weighed the young lady from the floor.

"There, son Sewell! " cried the honest mint-master, resuming his seat in Grandfather's chair, "take these shillings for my daughter's portion. Use her kindly, and thank Heaven for her. It is not every wife that's worth her weight in silver!"

The children laughed heartily at this legend, and would hardly be convinced but that Grandfather had made it out of his own head. He assured them faithfully, however, that he had found it in the pages of a grave historian, and had merely tried to tell it in a somewhat funnier style. As for Samuel Sewell, he afterwards became chief justice of Massachusetts.

"Well, Grandfather," remarked Clara, "if wedding portions nowadays were paid as Miss Betsey's was, young ladies would not pride themselves upon an airy figure, as many of them do."

^{End Notes}

¹ Biddeford & Saco News, The Biddeford-Saco Journal, Biddeford, ME, April 27, 1895, P. 3

² “Melancholy Circumstances”, The Recorder, Greenfield, MA, April 13, 1819, P. 2

³ “Storm made them Orphans”, The Biddeford-Saco Journal, Biddeford, ME, August 15, 1893, P 3.

⁴ Maine, U.S. Birth Records, 1715-1922 for Betsy Tarbox, Cumberland County, 1815.

⁵ “Death of ‘Little Betsy.’ The Heroine of one of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Works of Maine Woman,” Sun-Journal, Lewiston, ME, April 26, 1895, P. 8.