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Characters

• Hepzibah Pyncheon - Hepzibah is an unmarried older woman, a descendant of the Pyncheon who built the house of the title. She is from a high-society class but destitute. At the beginning of the novel, she has opened a cent-shop in the first floor of the house because of the financial ruin of the family.

• Holgrave - a daguerreotypist who boards at the house who, unbeknownst to any of the other characters, is a descendant of the original Matthew Maule. (Who had been hanged as a witch at the instigation of the original Colonel Jaffrey Pyncheon, in order to thereby steal the land upon which the house was built.)

• Phoebe Pyncheon - a young cousin of Hepzibah's, Phoebe has grown up in the country without airs. She shows up, intending to stay a couple of weeks. She immediatedly wins over the Pyncheons and their neighbors with her natural charm and vivaciousness.

• Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon - He is a well-to-do judge and political aspirant who lives on a comfortable estate out of town. In appearance and character he so strongly resembles the "original" Colonel Pyncheon, who built the house, that some people mistake portraits of the ancestor for the descendant. In fact, he is just as vicious and unrelenting as his ancestor in his hunt for a lost land deed, the purported source of new wealth for the desolute Pyncheon clan.

• Clifford Pyncheon - Clifford is Hepzibah's elderly, nearly bed-ridden brother who comes to live in the house after being released from prison, where he was serving a sentence for the alleged murder of his uncle; but as it turns out, he was framed by his own cousin, Jaffrey.

• Uncle Venner - A jovial old man (he is, in fact, even older than Hebzipah) who is the only neighbor to the Pyncheons still in good standings with them.

• Ned Higgins - A young precocious boy who drops by Hebzipah's cent shop every now and then to deplete her supply of gingerbread cookies.