Nathaniel Hawthorne's most direct link to the Salem Witch Trials was a family one.  His great-great-grandfather, John Hathorne, was a judge during the trials.  Hawthorne considered the Salem Witch Trials to be one of the greatest tragedies and most humiliating moments in American history, and he was ashamed of his ancestor as a result.  In order to differentiate himself from John Hathorne, Nathaniel added the "w" to his last name.

We can see Hawthorne's attempts to work through the sense of guilt he felt as a descendant of a man responsible for the senseless deaths of nineteen people, and the incarceration of a great many more, including a small child of four, Dorcas Good, who experienced an extreme mental break, as a result of her time in jail, a break from which she never recovered (she'd confessed in order to be with her mother after her mother had been accused).  Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables deals directly with the subject of ancestral guilt and whether or not such guilt, when left unaddressed, continues to follow one's descendants.