Chalcraft-Pickering with Salem connection

Tapestry

This is a beautifully embroidered tapestry depicting the Pickering Coat of Arms was created by a Sarah Pickering Clarke dated 1753. She was a niece of the Rev.Theophilus Pickering..

This photo was found among the archives of the Chalcraft-Pickering papers in the state of Washington. William Pickering, Governor of Washington Territory from 1862 to 1866 was the grandfather of Alice Chalcraft. He was born March 15, 1797 in a small village in Yorkshire and emigrated to North America in the 1820s. In the 1840s he was elected to the Illinois State Legislature, and in the later 1850s he attached himself to the political cause of Abraham Lincoln, who eventually appointed Pickering as Governor of Washington Territory. Pickering lived with his son Richard at Albion in later years. He died at Albion, Illinois in 1873.

Known as the "Wartime Governor" of Washington, Pickering had the reputation of an effective administrator and politician, although the affairs of the Territory were of a quite modest scale at the time.


Pickering tapestry
"The Pickering Coat of Arms. From an emproidery wrought by Sarah Pickering [48. V. 17,] in 1753, now in the possession of John Pickering, Esq. Salem, Mass."

"There is still another example of these arms, in te form of a hatchment, which was probably worked by Abigail (Pickering) Baldwin, a cousin of Sara Pickering, and from whom it descended to her niece Hannah (Pickering) Simonds and from her to her daughter Hannah M. (Simonds) Clark, of Lynn, in whose possession it was a few years ago>"

ref: The Pickering Genealogy: Being an Account of the First Three Generations of Pickering Family of Salem, Mass., and of the descendants of John and Sarah (Burrill) Pickering, of the Third Generation. By: Harrison Ellery and Charles Pickering Bowditch Vol I, Pages 1-287. Privately Printed 1897