the Pyncheons taking the place of The author's family,
certain distinguishing marks of the Hawthornes were assigned
to the imaginary Maule posterity.

There are one or two other points which indicate Hawthorne's
method of basing his compositions, the result in the main
of pure invention, on the solid ground of particular facts.
Allusion is made, in the first chapter of the "Seven Gables,"
to a grant of lands in Waldo County, Maine, owned by the
Pyncheon family. In the "American Note-Books" there is an entry,
dated August 12, 1837, which speaks of the Revolutionary general,
Knox, and his land-grant in Waldo County, by virtue of which the
owner had hoped to establish an estate on the English plan,
with a tenantry to make it profitable for him. An incident of
much greater importance in the story is the supposed murder of
one of the Pyncheons by his nephew, to whom we are introduced as
Clifford Pyncheon. In all probability Hawthorne connected with
this, in his mind, the murder of Mr. White, a wealthy gentleman
of Salem, killed by a man whom his nephew had hired. This took
place a few years after Hawthorne's gradation from college,
and was one of the celebrated cases of the day, Daniel Webster
taking part prominently in the trial. But it should be observed
here that such resemblances as these between sundry elements in
the work of Hawthorne's fancy and details of reality are only
fragmentary, and are rearranged to suit the author's purposes.

In the same way he has made his description of Hepzibah Pyncheon's
seven-gabled mansion conform so nearly to several old dwellings
formerly or still extant in Salem, that strenuous efforts have
been made to fix upon some one of them as the veritable edifice