On July 13, 1858, Susanna Ingersoll passed away at the age of 74. She was the daughter of Captain Samuel and Susannah (Hathorne) Ingersoll, residing at the Turner mansion- which would later come to be known as the Turner-Ingersoll mansion, otherwise known today as the House of the Seven Gables. John Turner, the original owner of the house, is also buried at Charter, having constructed the home by 1668 and dying in 1680. Susanna was the only resident to both be born and die in the house. When Susanna’s father died in 1804, her mother took control of the house, and upon her mother’s death in 1811, the burden of managing the estate fell onto Susanna’s shoulders. Susanna’s relations, the Hathornes, attempted to wrest control of the building and its contents from Susanna- even contesting the matter in court- but her rightful inheritance of the house was upheld. The Reverend William Bentley described the “curious scene” in his diary, detailing how he assisted Susanna by keeping her company and ‘taking such charge as she desired him’, hiding both money and keys from the Hathornes and keeping them at bay.
Susanna would both buy and sell over 62 properties throughout the course of her life, continuing the practice her mother had started before her death. Some property Susanna purchased outright, and some were mortgaged for families who wanted to keep their homes but not live there, as the impact of and subsequent panic during the War of 1812 caused some families in Salem to leave the coast. Susanna, however, stayed, and eventually adopted a son, Horace Connolly Ingersoll.
Later in her life, her second cousin, and Horace’s friend Nathaniel Hawthorne, would visit the mansion with some frequency, and his fascination with her description of the old house (namely that it once had ‘seven gables’) inspired him to write a fictitious story inspired by it. The popularity of “The House of the Seven Gables” caused Hawthorne’s birthplace house to eventually be moved to the property, creating the present-day campus layout for the Gables’ museum. The house was itself modified over the years to reflect some of the novel’s version of its architecture.
Upon Susanna’s death in 1858, she was interred in the Bradstreet Tomb. By this point, the tomb had been owned by her family for almost 70 years, having been purchased by her father and her uncle, Col. John Hathorne, from Benjamin Pickman Jr. in 1789 for six pounds (not uncontroversially, as Benjamin Pickman was very much not Simon Bradstreet). She was reportedly buried in a cast iron coffin that bore her name on a plaque; iron coffins came into use amongst wealthier families beginning in the mid-1800’s in an effort to protect and preserve the decedent’s remains. Along with her family members that passed before her, Susanna’s son Horace would be interred in the tomb as well upon his death in 1894 at the age of 86, one of the last to be buried in Charter Street.