Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 5).djvu/23

Rh 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