The Adulteress & the Airman

The Tangled Story Behind Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and Concord’s Hanscom Airforce Base

BY JAIMEE LEIGH JOROFF

When doing research, you occasionally come across a colossal mess that makes you think, “Wow! This is so inappropriate!” And you can’t wait to share it. This article is the result of one of those moments. Are you ready?

We’re going back to the year 1632. Shrieking seagulls and ocean mist surround us as we walk down the swaying gangway of The William and Francis, just arriving from London, England, and docking in Boston Harbor in the newly formed Massachusetts Bay Colony. With us is the Reverend Stephen Bachiler, a Puritan minister who, like Concord’s own founding minister, Peter Bulkeley, was driven out of England for resisting the religious reforms of King Charles the I.

Perhaps twelve weeks on the Atlantic washed away some of Reverend Bachiler’s grasp on the ten commandments because he seemed to soon forget about his third wife, Helena, who had arrived on the same ship with him. After a few contentious years serving as a minister throughout Massachusetts and Hampton, New Hampshire, the reverend settled his eyes – and hands– on another man’s wife.

“This is so inappropriate!” shouted his clergy as they removed him from his pulpit and excommunicated him. Any resulting marital strife between the Reverend Bachiler and Helena was short lived, for she soon became ill and died.

Widowed again and without a pulpit, the reverend moved across the Piscataqua River to Kittery, Maine (which would soon join the Massachusetts Bay Colony), where he was eventually restored to the church but barred from pastoral duties.

Now along came a desperate young widow named Mary Magdalene Bailey Beadle, with her three little children in tow. An arrangement was made between Mary and Reverend Bachiler, and Mary and her children moved into the reverend’s house where Mary acted as the housekeeper.

Rumors began to spread of Mary and the reverend‘s shared close attention to domestic activities. Reverend Bachiler was summoned before the black-robed and white-collared clergy. “This is so inappropriate!” they stated, “Explain!” “It’s OK,” the reverend replied, “We’re married.” “By whom?” demanded the surprised clergy. “By me!” answered the reverend.

Unlike these quotes, which are based on historical records and not verbatim, the reverend assured everyone that his marriage to Mary was real, and life went on respectably.

As time passes, we all know it’s important to stay active. Walking is very good for you, but the rough ground of newly settled Maine would have challenged anyone’s footsteps, and it’s likely that 86-year-old Reverend Bachiler had trouble keeping up with 25-year-old-Mary, who walked down the road and met local (and young) man George Rogers. Say it with Mary: “Hello, George!”

Mary and George became quite fond of each other until the two would soon obviously become three. “This is so inappropriate!” screamed the townspeople.

In 1651, Mary and George were brought before the Georgeana (York) Court in Maine and charged with adultery. George was sentenced to 40 lashes of the whip, and Mary to 39. In an act of Puritan mercy, Mary’s sentence was suspended until after she’d had the baby (a little girl, Mary Rogers), and then it was back on again.

The Puritans followed the Breeches Bible in which, after Cain murders his brother Abel, the Lord places a mark on Cain for eternity. Well, if the Lord could do it, surely the Puritans could too. After being whipped in public, Mary was branded with a letter “A” for adulteress. The barbarous punishment was witnessed by the community, which included George Rogers’ neighbor, William Hathorne, who would become the 3rd-great-grandfather of Concord/ Salem writer Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Nathaniel Hawthorne painting by Charles Osgood, 1840

Born in 1804, Nathaniel Hawthorne grew up steeped in his family’s history. His great-greatgrandfather, John Hathorne (son of the aforementioned William), became the infamously cruel “Hanging Judge” of the Salem Witch trials, a stain so great that it permanently affected Nathaniel, who added the “w” to his last name in an attempt to distance himself from his ancestral shame. Tales of his ancestors and early New England frequently wound into Hawthorne’s writings, and he would likely have been aware of the controversial Reverend Stephen Bachiler and his young, straying wife Mary with George Roger’s baby on her hip.

In 1842, Nathaniel Hawthorne and his wife Sophia moved to Concord, MA, where they rented the Old Manse on Monument Street. Here, Hawthorne compiled short stories into a book, Mosses from An Old Manse. At the same time, beginning to form in his head was a tale parallel to the real-life Mary Magdalene Bachiler: This would become one of his most successful novels, The Scarlet Letter. In it, a shadowy, older husband marries a young Hester Prynne, and moves to New England. Hester falls in love with a youthful minister, the Reverend Dimmesdale, and has his child; a baby girl called Pearl. Hester’s adultery is discovered; she is punished before the community and made to wear a scarlet letter “A” marking her sin. The Scarlet Letter was published by Boston publishers Ticknor and Fields in 1850. The novel was scandalous, the content juicy and taboo. The reading public loved it. However, some members of the Boston religious community complained, “This is so inappropriate!”

Leaving Hawthorne and his publishers to deal with the critics, we must hop back to 1650s Kittery, Maine, because we’re not done with Mary yet, and she’s not done either.

By this point, you may be asking, “Can’t we just leave poor Mary alone?” And the answer is “no” because we’re in Puritan times and involved in everyone’s business. In addition to judging one another, the Puritans and early settlers frequently sued each other. One resident of Kittery, Maine, who was sued several times for disputes involving property boundaries and trespassing, was Thomas Hanscom. Speaking of boundaries, say it with Mary: “Hello, Thomas!”

The Scarlet Letter, painting of Hester Prynne and Pearl by Hughes Merle (1861)

In 1654, Mary and Thomas were summoned before the Georgeana court, fined, and ordered to cease their relationship. Thomas was warned to avoid the married adulteress, Mary Bachiler!

On pain of imprisonment and fines, the court also ordered Reverend Bachiler and Mary to remain together as husband and wife, for, after all, as the reverend had assured everyone, they were married. But the reverend, who by now had a permanently dead desire to resurrect anything with his personal Mary Magdalene, said “nope,” filed for divorce and sailed home to England.

The divorce was finally granted. The reverend died 17 days later. George Rogers remained whipped out of the picture, and Thomas Hanscom kept away. Within a year, Mary married another man, and here we leave her in history.

We return now to Thomas Hanscom, who in 1664 married Ann Downing. We fly along their family tree and pause around 1906, when their direct descendant, Laurence Gerald Hanscom, was born in Massachusetts. Laurence was a skilled aviator and a reporter for the Boston Globe. As World War II loomed, Laurence helped plan the creation of airfields in Massachusetts, including one located on farmland in Bedford, MA, next to Concord.

On February 9, 1941, Laurence was instructing another pilot on a training flight over a swamp in Saugus, MA. The men’s plane performed three loops in the air, entered a fourth, and suddenly spiraled straight into the ground. Both pilots died on impact.

In Laurence’s honor, the airfield he planned in Bedford was namedHanscom Airfield, becoming Hanscom Airforce Base in 1947. Today, the airfield stretches into part of Concord, MA.

So, the next time you are walking through Concord in the footsteps of Nathaniel Hawthorne as he dreamed up The Scarlet Letter, and a plane flies overhead, you may remember you are walking in the centuries-connected company of the Adulteress and the Airman.

For source list, email: BarrowBookstore@gmail.com.

A Concord native, Jaimee Joroff is Manager of the Barrow Bookstore in Concord Center, which specializes in Concord history, Transcendentalism, and literary figures. She has been an interpreter at most of Concord’s historic sites and is a licensed town guide.