In the growth of the town, however, after some thirty or forty
years, the site covered by this rude hovel had become exceedingly
desirable in the eyes of a prominent and powerful personage, who
asserted plausible claims to the proprietorship of this and a
large adjacent tract of land, on the strength of a grant from the
legislature. Colonel Pyncheon, the claimant, as we gather from
whatever traits of him are preserved, was characterized by an
iron energy of purpose. Matthew Maule, on the other hand, though
an obscure man, was stubborn in the defence of what he considered
his right; and, for several years, he succeeded in protecting the
acre or two of earth which, with his own toil, he had hewn out
of the primeval forest, to be his garden ground and homestead.
No written record of this dispute is known to be in existence.
Our acquaintance with the whole subject is derived chiefly from
tradition. It would be bold, therefore, and possibly unjust,
to venture a decisive opinion as to its merits; although it
appears to have been at least a matter of doubt, whether Colonel
Pyncheon's claim were not unduly stretched, in order to make it
cover the small metes and bounds of Matthew Maule. What greatly
strengthens such a suspicion is the fact that this controversy
between two ill-matched antagonists --at a period, moreover,
laud it as we may, when personal influence had far more weight
than now--remained for years undecided, and came to a close only
with the death of the party occupying the disputed soil. The mode
of his death, too, affects the mind differently, in our day,
from what it did a century and a half ago. It was a death that
blasted with strange horror the humble name of the dweller in
the cottage, and made it seem almost a religious act to drive
the plough over the little area of his habitation, and obliterate
his place and memory from among men.