Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

Born in Lenox, Massachusetts, in 1851, she was the daughter of novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne and Sophia Peabody Hawthorne. She spent part of her childhood abroad while her father served as a U.S. consul, and she later became a writer herself.

Her adult life was shaped by both literary work and deep personal sorrow, including the death of her young son and the breakdown of her marriage to George Parsons Lathrop. After converting to Catholicism, she devoted herself to serving people with incurable cancer who had little or no money for care.

Taking the religious name Mother Mary Alphonsa, she founded the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne and helped establish homes where the sick poor could be treated with dignity. She died in 1926, remembered for joining a writer's sensitivity to a life of direct service.