Pyncheon, about a hundred years ago, with circumstances very similar
to what have been related of the Colonel's exit, was held as giving
additional probability to the received opinion on this topic. It was
considered, moreover, an ugly and ominous circumstance, that Colonel
Pyncheon's picture--in obedience, it was said, to a provision of his
will--remained affixed to the wall of the room in which he died.
Those stern, immitigable features seemed to symbolize an evil influence,
and so darkly to mingle the shadow of their presence with the sunshine
of the passing hour, that no good thoughts or purposes could ever
spring up and blossom there. To the thoughtful mind there will be no
tinge of superstition in what we figuratively express, by affirming
that the ghost of a dead progenitor--perhaps as a portion of his own
punishment--is often doomed to become the Evil Genius of his family.

The Pyncheons, in brief, lived along, for the better part of two
centuries, with perhaps less of outward vicissitude than has
attended most other New England families during the same period
of time. Possessing very distinctive traits of their own, they
nevertheless took the general characteristics of the little
community in which they dwelt; a town noted for its frugal,
discreet, well-ordered, and home-loving inhabitants, as well as
for the somewhat confined scope of its sympathies; but in which,
be it said, there are odder individuals, and, now and then,
stranger occurrences, than one meets with almost anywhere else.
During the Revolution, the Pyncheon of that epoch, adopting the
royal side, became a refugee; but repented, and made his reappearance,
just at the point of time to preserve the House of the Seven Gables
from confiscation. For the last seventy years the most noted
event in the Pyncheon annals had been likewise the heaviest
calamity that ever befell the race; no less than the violent