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Colonel Pyncheon

The iron-willed Puritan founder of the Pyncheon dynasty, a soldier and magistrate of great local power and stern religious severity. He aggressively pursued the condemnation of Matthew Maule for witchcraft, widely suspected to have been motivated by his desire to seize Maule's land, and then built the House of the Seven Gables on that very spot. On the day of the mansion's festive consecration he was found dead in his study, his beard soaked in blood, widely believed to be the fulfillment of Maule's dying curse. His portrait remained fixed to the wall of the room where he died, a dark and brooding presence for all subsequent generations.

Matthew Maule

A humble, stubborn settler who built a cottage and cultivated a small homestead on the site later seized by Colonel Pyncheon, drawing his livelihood from a natural spring on the land. He was executed for witchcraft, a charge widely believed to have been engineered by Colonel Pyncheon to obtain his land. From the scaffold he delivered the curse—'God will give him blood to drink!'—which became hereditary legend haunting the Pyncheons for generations. He is remembered as a martyr and proto-wizard whose spiritual power outlasted his death.

Thomas Maule

The son of Matthew Maule, he served as the head carpenter and architect of the very House of the Seven Gables built over his father's condemned homestead. Despite the bitter wrong done to his family, he performed his work faithfully, and the timber framework he fastened together still held after generations. His choice to build the house is presented as both pragmatic and morally ambiguous.

Judge Pyncheon

A prominent contemporary descendant of Colonel Pyncheon who has achieved high respectability as a judge, congressman, and state legislator, widely regarded as an honor to his race. He inherited the Pyncheon estate after his cousin—an old bachelor—died under suspicious circumstances, a murder for which another cousin (Clifford) was convicted. Beneath his polished public image, he exhibits the same iron will, acquisitiveness, and moral ruthlessness as the original Colonel Pyncheon. He owns a modern country-seat near the old town and has repeatedly offered the impoverished Hepzibah assistance, though with suspect motives.

Hepzibah Pyncheon

An elderly, impoverished spinster of the Pyncheon line who lives in extreme retirement in the House of the Seven Gables, holding a life-estate in it by the will of the murdered old bachelor. She is the sister of Clifford Pyncheon, the man convicted of their uncle's murder, and has quietly awaited his possible release. Wretchedly poor and reclusive, she refuses the comforts offered by her cousin Judge Pyncheon, clinging to a proud but decayed gentility.

Clifford Pyncheon

A male Pyncheon who has spent approximately thirty years imprisoned after being convicted of the violent death of his uncle, the old bachelor Pyncheon, on what appeared to be circumstantial evidence. Rumors circulate near the story's opening that he may be summoned forth from his 'living tomb.' He is Hepzibah's brother and a figure of long-buried tragedy at the heart of the narrative.

Phoebe Pyncheon

A young country-girl of seventeen, the last and youngest of the Pyncheon family, daughter of one of Judge Pyncheon's cousins who married a woman of no family or property and died young. She represents a fresh, uncorrupted branch of the Pyncheon bloodline, free from the ancestral pride and gloom of the main family. The chapter titles suggest she becomes romantically connected to Holgrave, the daguerreotypist.

Holgrave (the Daguerreotypist)

A young man and daguerreotypist who becomes a lodger or associate in the House of the Seven Gables, referenced in the chapter titles as 'The Daguerreotypist.' The introductory note strongly implies he is a descendant of the Maule line, and the romance culminates in his union with Phoebe Pyncheon, resolving the ancient feud between the two families. He embodies the Maule hereditary trait of reserve felt rather than spoken of.

Alice Pyncheon

A Pyncheon ancestor featured in a dedicated chapter ('Alice Pyncheon'), suggesting she plays a significant role in the family's legendary history. Her name is also preserved in 'Alice's Posies,' flowers associated with the Pyncheon garden, implying a romantic or tragic story tied to the house and perhaps to Maule mesmerism. She represents the more sympathetic, beauty-associated strand of the Pyncheon heritage.

The House of the Seven Gables

A large, rusty wooden mansion with seven acutely peaked gables facing various compass points and a huge clustered chimney at its center, situated on Pyncheon Street in a fictional New England town. Built in the colonial era by Colonel Pyncheon on land wrested from Matthew Maule, it has grown dark and weather-beaten over more than 160 years. It serves as both home and symbol of the Pyncheon family's pride, guilt, and decay. The house is regarded almost as a living presence, its countenance bearing the traces of generations of mortal life and sin.

Pyncheon Street (formerly Maule's Lane)

The by-street on which the House of the Seven Gables stands, renamed from Maule's Lane after the Pyncheon family displaced the Maules and built their grand mansion. An ancient elm tree—the Pyncheon Elm—stands before the door and is a landmark familiar to every town-born child. The renaming of the street itself reflects the erasure of the Maule family's rightful claim to the land.

Maule's Well

A natural spring of soft, pleasant water on the original Maule homestead that was prized in the early Puritan settlement. After Colonel Pyncheon built his cellar and mansion over the site, the spring's water turned hard and brackish, and local tradition holds it causes intestinal mischief to those who drink from it. The corruption of the well is seen as an outward sign of the curse and moral taint upon the property.

The Pyncheon Family

An aristocratic New England family founded by the iron-willed Puritan Colonel Pyncheon, who built his dynasty on land seized through the judicial murder of Matthew Maule. Over nearly two centuries they maintained the House of the Seven Gables and a posture of inherited gentility, periodically producing individuals of hard practical energy who resembled the founding Colonel. By the story's present day the family has dwindled to a handful of members: the powerful Judge Pyncheon, the imprisoned Clifford, the reclusive Hepzibah, and the young country-girl Phoebe.

The Maule Family

The humble, plebeian descendants of Matthew Maule, the settler wrongfully executed for witchcraft at Colonel Pyncheon's instigation. For generations they lived quietly in the same town—laboring as craftsmen, wharfworkers, and sailors—apparently bearing their resentment privately while watching the Pyncheons occupy their ancestral land. They were marked by a hereditary trait of reserve felt rather than spoken, and reputed to possess mesmeric powers. By the story's present day their line appears extinct in the town, though Holgrave the daguerreotypist is implied to be a surviving descendant.

Colonel Pyncheon's Portrait

A painted portrait of the founding Colonel Pyncheon that was fixed to the wall of the room in which he died, reportedly by provision of his will. Its stern, immitigable features were believed to cast an evil influence over the chamber, mingling the shadow of the dead patriarch's presence with every passing moment and preventing good thoughts or purposes from flourishing there. It served as a constant, brooding reminder of ancestral guilt.

Colonel Pyncheon's Map of Waldo County

An antique map of the vast eastern wilderness territory claimed by Colonel Pyncheon, drawn when Waldo County was still unbroken forest. Subsequent generations of Pyncheons consulted it obsessively, marking cleared spaces and calculating the value of lands they had long since lost legal claim to. The map is a physical emblem of the family's delusion of grandeur and their inability to relinquish the past.

Maule's Curse

At the moment of his execution for witchcraft, Matthew Maule pointed at Colonel Pyncheon and declared, 'God will give him blood to drink!' This dying prophecy became the foundational curse of the Pyncheon family, fulfilled almost immediately when the Colonel was found dead with blood soaking his beard on the very day the house was consecrated. The curse was understood to pass down through generations: whenever a Pyncheon died suddenly, bystanders would whisper, 'He has Maule's blood to drink!' It represents the principle that the sins of one generation are inherited as misfortune by all who follow.

The Pyncheon-Maule Land Dispute

Matthew Maule cultivated a small homestead on land that Colonel Pyncheon later claimed under a legislative grant, a claim widely suspected to have been stretched beyond its legitimate scope. The dispute was resolved only by Maule's execution for witchcraft, after which his land passed without contest to the Colonel. This original act of legally sanctioned theft is the moral seed from which all subsequent Pyncheon misfortune grows, embodying Hawthorne's theme that ill-gotten wealth becomes a curse to posterity.

The Waldo County Land Claim

Colonel Pyncheon held a claim—through an Indian deed confirmed by legislative grant—to a vast, unmeasured tract of wilderness comprising much of what became Waldo County, Maine. The claim was never consummated before his death and subsequently became legally uncertain; portions were regranted to others and settled by independent farmers. For generations the Pyncheons nursed this impalpable claim, consulting the Colonel's old map and calculating imaginary fortunes, fostering a hereditary delusion of noble wealth that kept poorer members of the family in idle dependence.

Maule Mesmerism and the Looking-Glass

A tradition holds that descendants of Matthew Maule possessed a mysterious mesmeric power by which they could animate a large dim looking-glass hanging in the Pyncheon house, causing the reflections of dead Pyncheons to re-enact deeds of sin or moments of bitterest sorrow. This supernatural ability, passed through the Maule bloodline, suggests that the wizard's power was hereditary and that the Maules retained a hidden spiritual dominion over the family that displaced them.

The Moral of Inherited Sin

Hawthorne states explicitly in the Preface that the romance's moral is that 'the wrong-doing of one generation lives into the successive ones, and, divesting itself of every temporary advantage, becomes a pure and uncontrollable mischief.' The Pyncheon saga illustrates how an ancestral act of greed and injustice—seizing Maule's land through persecution—shadows every subsequent generation, manifesting as mysterious deaths, imprisonments, poverty, and moral corruption. This principle is the governing lore of the entire setting.