32 



A.ppE:>cr)ix A.. 



A brief summary of Colonel Pickering's long and noble 

 career, will, I think, interest many, who have only a vague 

 idea of his character and services, and certainly deserves a 

 place on the records ot our Society. The following account 

 is but little more than a chronolosrical index. 



Born, 1745, in Salem ; graduated at Harvard, 1763 ; took 

 an active and prominent part in all the pre-revolutionary con- 

 test with Great Britain ; commanded the intrepid little squad 

 of Salem men, who stopped Col. Leslie and his troops, at the 

 North Bridge ; led his regiment to Medford, on the day of 

 Lexington fight ; was Register of Deeds for this county, 

 Judge of the Common Pleas, and of Admiralty ; volun- 

 teered with his regiment in 1776, and served under Wash- 

 ington in New Jersey ; was by him, soon after, made Adjutant 

 General ; fought on the Brandy wine; suffered at Valley Forge; 

 sat with Gates and Mifflin on the Continental Board of War ; 

 succeeded Gen. Greene as Quarter Master General, and per- 

 formed all the duties of that responsible and laborious post, 

 until the close of the war. On the return of peace, he settled 

 as a farmer at Wyoming, in Pennsylvania. There, his neigh- 

 bors were Connecticut men, who had planted themselves on 

 the Susquehanna, without leave from Pennsylvania. Falsely 

 assuming, in their resistance to the State Government, that 

 Col. Pickering, who held the county offices, was hostile to 



