The House of The Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne Chapter 1 Page 35

Some connecting link had slipped out of the evidence, and could not anywhere be found.

Efforts, it is true, were made by the Pyncheons, not only then, but at various periods for nearly a hundred years afterwards, to obtain what they stubbornly persisted in deeming their right. But, in course of time, the territory was partly regranted to more favored individuals, and partly cleared and occupied by actual settlers. These last, if they ever heard of the Pyncheon title, would have laughed at the idea of any man’s asserting a right — on the strength of mouldy parchments, signed with the faded autographs of governors and legislators long dead and forgotten — to the lands which they or their fathers had wrested from the wild hand of nature by their own sturdy toil.