Pickerings in America

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Quick Link: Our Pickeirng family in America

In a correspondence between Colonel Timothy Pickering of Salem [Mass.} and the Rev. Joseph Pickering, of Wickham, near Fareham, Hampshire, England, in which the latter asked if their ancestry was the same if if they had the same arms and crest, Colonel Pickering replied:

"Theophilus lived a bachelor and died in 1747, when I was two years old. He was critically exact in all his affairs and notices of things. He left (I believe his own drawing) what have been considered the family arms, - a lion rampant in a field ermine, with a helmet for a crest. ... There has been a tradition in the family that our first American ancestor came from Yorkshire."

In his reply of June 30, 1797, The Rev. Mr. Pickering wrote:

"Your arms and mine are exactly similar, and that circumstance I consider proof enough. Our Crests are different, but that is not material, since crests, the heralds tell us, are mere matters of caprice and fancy and may be varied at pleasure, and therefore are never allowed to be of any weight in the tracing of pedigrees."

Source: The Pickering Genealogy: Being an account of the First Three Generations of The Pickering Family of Salem, Mass. by Charles Pickering Bowditch, Privately printed 1897.

The Wickham mentioned in this letter is located about 233 miles south of Frodsham, Cheshire, England near the coast of Portsmouth. No trace of our Pickering line has been found in this most southern part of England. But it's interesting to note that the Pickerings of Thelwall and Cheshire [northern England] continued to use this arms into the last 19th century. Since the coat of arms that was handed down through our family is exactly the same as described in these letters, the question arises; "Are we then, in any way, related to the Salem Pickerings"? See more detailed discussion on our Hearldry page.

1633 Portsmouth,NH
John Pickering and wife Mary. Child: Lydia b. Nov 5 1638 [of Massachusetts]

1630 Salem, MA
John Pickering [15 years old] from England living in Ipswich then Salem in 1637

1689 Philadelphia, PA
Charles Pickering, Merchant
Pickering, Atty at Law

1722 Salem, Mass. John Pickering [grandson of the original Salem settler] shows a lion rampant on the seal of his will. No impression of the seal can be found of an earlier date than in 1722.


1892 BOSTON, Mass. Directory
Thirty-seven (37) people named Pickering

New England: only John pickering of Portsmouth, and John Pickeirng [b. 11615, Yorkshire, England] of Salem founded permanent families. These two families have been the most prolific and the most widely known. Although no relationship is known to exist between these two families, there was certainly a marked silimiarity in their offical and social standing.

Each had a son John who took a leading role in their respective towns. Both of these second Johns were officers in the militia and held a large number of town office. I won't go into the descendants of these two families which lead to many notorious and admired Pickerings in the US as they are well recorded in the history books of this country. I merely mention the family of Timothy Pickeirng because this ancestrial roots and similarity of hearldry.