Daniel Hathorne was born in 1731 to Joseph and Sarah Bowditch Hathorne, moderately wealthy farmers from prestigious families. The Hathorne’s had traditionally made their money in land, but Daniel had an adventurous streak, beginning a career at sea. He would move to a house on Union St, (now located on the House of Seven Gables campus) which, while a less fashionable section of town, offered convenient access to wharves and the maritime economy. Though quite comfortable as a merchant captain, Daniel’s opportunity for advancement would come in the early days of the Revolutionary War.
Salem was a Tory stronghold, but it possessed a strong revolutionary minority, one that Daniel Hathorne was eager to be a part of. As open hostilities between the American colonies and the English government broke out, Hathorne refitted his ships for privateering, which could be even more lucrative than trade. Hathorne would captain various ships during the war: The Wasp, The Sturdy Beggar, and most famously The True American. In a post-revolutionary America, Hathorne’s privateering actions served him well and he would go on to be one of the founding members of the East India Marine Society (now the Peabody Essex Museum). His two sons would follow in his maritime footsteps, although with less success. His son Daniel would die at sea in 1804. His other son, Nathaniel would die in 1808 of Yellow Fever while in South America, leaving behind his son Nathaniel Jr, who would go on to make a name for himself as the author Nathaniel Hawthorne.
While largely overshadowed by either his famous grandfather or his famous grandson, Daniel Hathorne lives on as one of Salem’s leading Revolutionary figures. His legacy is preserved in the song Bold Hawthorne, describing the captain's battle with a British packet off the coast of Portugal, written by a ‘surgeon of the vessel’. The veracity of this ballad has been called into question, as it appears for the first time in 1842 and gets the outcome of the battle wrong (namely the unfortunate fact that it was actually Hathorne’s ship that fled the conflict, not vice versa).