the executive council of Massachusetts, his last
public office. The last years of his life wen- spent
in Salem, with frequent visits to the Wcnham farm.
On Sunday. 4 Jan., 1829, sitting in an ill-warmed
church, he caught the cold of which he died. The
section of the Federalist party to which Col. Pick-
ering belonged was led by a group of men known
as the "Essex Junto," comprising Parsons, Cabot,
Sedgwick, H. G. Otis, and the Lowells, of Massa-
chusetts, with Griswold and Reeve, of Connecticut.
In 1804, and again in 1809, the question of a disso-
lution of the Union and the formation of a sepa-
rate Eastern confederacy was seriously discussed
by these Federalist leaders, and in 1814 they were
foremost in the proceedings that led to the Hart-
ford convention. Attempts to call such a conven-
tion had been made in 1808 and 1812. The designs
of the convention were not clearly understood, but
the suspicion of disunion tendencies that clung to
it sufficed to complete the ruin of the Federalist
party, which did not survive the election of 1816.
In the work of the conventionists of 1814 Col.
Pickering took no direct part, and he was not pres-
ent at Hartford. Col. Pickering married, 8 April,
1770, Rebecca White, who was born in Bristol,
England, IS July. 1754, and died in Salem. 14
Aug., 1828. Their wedded life was extremely hap-
py. Col. Pickering's biography, with copious ex-
tracts from his correspondence, was begun by his
son, Octavius Pickering " Life of Timothy Picker-
ing " (vol. i., Boston, 1867) and after the death of
the latter, was finished by Charles W. Upham
(vols. ii.-iv., 1873). See also Adams's" Documents
relating to New England Federalism " (Boston,
1877) and Schouler's " History of the United
Stairs " (vols. i. and ii., Washington, 1882). Timo-
thy's eldest son, John, philologist, b. in Salem,
Mass., 7 Feb., 1777; d. in Boston. Mass., 5 May.
184H, was graduated at Harvard in 1796. and then
studied law with Edward Tilghman in Philadel-
phia. In 1797 he became secretary to Villiam
Smith, on the appointment of the latter as U.S. min-
ister to Portugal, and two years later he became pri-
vate secretary to Rufus King, then minister to Great
Britain. He returned to Salem in 1801, resumed
his legal studies, and. after being admitted to the
bar, practised in Salem until 1827. Mr. Pickering
then removed to Boston, and was appointed city
solicitor, which office he held until shortly before
his death. Notwithstanding his large practice,
he also devoted his attention to politics. He was
three times in the lower house of the legislature,
twice a state senator from Essex county and once
from Suffolk county, and a member of the execu-
tive council. In 1833 he served on the commission
for revising and arranging the statutes of M-i ,.-
chusetts, and the part that is entitled "Of the In-
ternal Administration of Government " was pre-
pared by him. Mr. Pickering became celebrated
by his philological studies, which gained for him
the reputation of being the chief founder of Ameri-
can comparative philology. These he began as a
young man, when he accompanied his father on
visits to the Six Nations of central New York, and
as he grew older they increased by his study abroad
until, according to Charles Sumner, he was famil-
iar with the English, French, Portuguese, Italian,
Spanish. German. Romaic, Greek, and Latin Ian
uages ; less familiar, but acquainted, with Dutch,
Heilish, Danish, and Hebrew, and had explored.
with various degrees of care, Arabic, Turkish,
Syriac, Persian, Coptic, Sanscrit, Chinese, Cochin-
Chinese, Russian, Egyptian hieroglyphics, Malay
in several dialects, and particularly the Indian
languages of America and the Polynesian islands.
With this great knowledge at his command, he
early used it in the, preparation of valuable articles
in reviews, transactions of learned societies, and
cnx-yclopa'dias. Among these are " On the Adop-
tion of a Uniform Orthography for the Indian Lan-
guages of North America " (1820) ; " Remarks on
the Indian Languages of North America " (1836) ;
and " Memoir on the Language and Inhabitants of
Lord North's Island" (1845); also, in book-form,
" A Vocabulary or Collection of Words and Phrases
which have been Supposed to be Peculiar to the
United States of America" (Boston, 1816), and
" A Comprehensive Dictionary of the Greek Lan-
guage" (1826). The latter passed through numer-
ous editions at home and was reprinted abroad. In
1806 he was elected Hancock professor of Hebrew
in Harvard, and later was invited to fill the chair
of Greek literature in that university, both of
which appointments he declined, as well as that of
provost of the University of Pennsylvania. He
was an active member of the board of overseers of
Harvard from 1818 till 1824. and received the de-
gree of LL. D. from Bowdoin in 1822, and from
Harvard in 1835. Mr. Pickering was one of the
founders of the American oriental society and its
president until his death, also president of the
American academy of arts and sciences, and a
member of various learned societies both at home
and abroad. Besides the works mentioned above,
he was the author of various le.gal articles, among
which are " The Agrarian Laws," " Egyptian Juris-
prudence," " Lecture on the Alleged Uncertainty
of Law," and " Review of the International Mc-
Leod Question " (1825). See " Life of John Pick-
ering," by his daughter, Mary Orne Pickering (Bos-
ton, 1887). Timothy's third" son, Henry, poet, b.
in Newburg, N. Y., 8 Oct., 1781; d. in New York
city, 8 May. 1831, was born in the historic llas-
Ijnuiek house, better known as Washington's head-
quarters, while his father was with Washington at
the siege of Yorktown. He accompanied the fam-
ily to Boston in 1801, and engaged in business in
Salem, acquiring in a few years a moderate for-
tune, from which he contributed largely to the
support of his father's family and to the education
of its younger members. In consequence of losses,
he removed to New York in 1825, and endeavored
to retrieve his fortune, but without success. He
then resided at Rondout and other places along
the Hudson, where he devoted his leisure to read-
ing, and writing poetry. His writings appeared in
the "Evening Post," and include "Ruins of Pass-
tum" (Salem, 1822): "Athens, and other Poems"
(1824); "Poems" (1830); and "The Buckwheat
Cake" (1831). Another son of Timothy, Octa-
vius, lawyer, b. in Wyoming, Pa., 2 Sept., 1791;
d. in Boston, Mass., 29 Oct., 1.868. was graduated
at Harvard in 1810, and then studied law with his
brother, John Pickering. In March, 1816. he was
admitted to the bar of Suffolk county, and opened
an office in Boston. He assisted in reporting the
debates and proceedings of the Massachusetts con-
stitutional convention of 1820. In 1822-'40 he
was reporter of the supreme court of Massachu-
setts. During these years he prepared the " Re-
ports of Cases in the Supreme Judicial Court of
Massachusetts " (24 vols., Boston, 1822-'40). On
retiring from office he visited Europe and spent
seven years in England and on the continent. He
took an active interest in natural history, was a
fellow of the American academy of arts and sci-
ences, and one of the founders, in December, 1814,
of the New England society for the promotion of
natural history, which subsequently became the
Linna'an society of New England, and out of which
Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 5).djvu/23
This page needs to be proofread.
PICKERING
PICKERING
3
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7a/Appletons%27_Cyclop%C3%A6dia_of_American_Biography_%281900%2C_volume_5%29.djvu/page23-1024px-Appletons%27_Cyclop%C3%A6dia_of_American_Biography_%281900%2C_volume_5%29.djvu.jpg)