Dudley Leavitt Pickman (May 4, 1779 – November 4, 1846) was an American merchant and businessman who built one of the great trading firms in Salem, Massachusetts, during the seaport's ascendancy as a trading power in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.Pickman's career coincided with Salem's rise as a trading powerhouse. By the time Pickman's son took over the family interests, many of the town's early trading firms had moved on to Boston, with subsidiary offices in Salem.
Pickman was a partner in the firm Devereux, Pickman & Silsbee and a state senator. Among the wealthiest Salem merchants of his day, Pickman used his own clipper ships to trade with the Far East in an array of goods ranging from indigo and coffee to pepper and spices,Essex Institute Historical Collections, Vol. LVII, Essex Institute, Peabody Essex Museum, Printed for the Essex Institute, Salem, Mass., 1921 and was one of the state's earliest financiers, backing everything from cotton and woolen mills to railroads to water-generated power plants. Pickman also helped found what is today's Peabody Essex Museum.
Early life and career
Dudley Leavitt Pickman was born at Salem, Massachusetts, in May 1779, the second son of Salem's chief Naval Officer, William Pickman (1748–1815) and his wife Elizabeth (Leavitt) Pickman, daughter of Dudley Leavitt,Salem's Leavitt Street is named for the early Congregational minister. an early Congregational minister in Salem, and his wife Mary (Pickering) Leavitt, sister of United States Secretary of State Timothy Pickering. William Pickman secured his son The eldest son of William and Elizabeth Pickman was William Pickman Jr., who was lost at sea on December 13, 1798. a position in 1799 as a clerk for Chief Customs Collector Major Joseph Hiller.Old Time Ships of Salem, Robert Samuel Rantoul, William O. Chapman, Essex Institute, Salem, Mass., 1917 After working briefly for Hiller, Dudley Leavitt Pickman left the Customs Service in 1799 to go to sea as a ship's supercargo – business agent for the owner.Pickled Fish and Salted Provisions, Historical Musings from Salem Maritime National Historic Site, National Park Service
Pickman embarked on a merchant's career as a young man. He helped found the East India Marine Society (today's Peabody Essex Museum) of Salem in November 1800. (Joining two months prior was the eminent Salem merchant Elias Hasket Derby as well as Nathaniel Bowditch).The East-India Marine Society of Salem, Printed by W. Palfray Jr., Boston, Mass., 1821 In 1804 the East-India Marine Society moved to the Pickman Building on Essex Street, which had been specially fitted for the society.The Marine Room of the Peabody Museum of Salem
Early in his career, Pickman traveled to India as supercargo on a ship belonging to several Salem merchants. In his diary of the journey, Journal of the Belisarius, Pickman noted the appearance of the British fort at Calcutta: "Fort St. George is a handsome brick fortification. It appears very strong, but is probably too much extended to make as able a defense as might otherwise be done."Book Extract, The Yankees Have Landed, indiaprofile.com
Pickman kept journals on several of his other voyages as supercargo and then owner, and as its charter required, these journals were filed with the East-India Marine Society of Salem. These early documents show the vast reach of the large Salem trading houses. In 1799–1800, for instance, Pickman noted that the Belisarius had traveled first to the island of Tenerife, back to Salem, then on to Madras and Tranquebar, India, before returning to the Massachusetts port loaded with her bounty.Pickman made several trips to India, and kept detailed journals of his visits. The following year, Pickman kept the journal of the voyage of the ship Anna, captained by Benjamin Swett, which sailed from Boston to Sumatra and back in 1801.
Pickman made his early career out of repeated trips on the Belisarius. Before the ship went to pieces in a gale in the Bay of Tunis in April 1810, the clipper made repeated voyages to India and Sumatra with several captains in command and Pickman acting as supercargo. The clipper ship's voyages prompted Salem cleric Dr. William Bentley to call her "one of the richest ships of our port".Salem Vessels and Their Voyages: A History of the Pepper Trade with the Island of Sumatra, George Granville Putnam, The Essex Institute, Salem, Mass., 1922 (Captain Samuel Skerry, the most renowned of the Belisarius captains, died at age 36 after being kicked in the stomach by a horse.)
Later career
Pickman soon founded his own trading firm. He and his partners owned an array of clipper ships including the brig Endeavor, the Malay, the Borneo,Ship Registers of the District of Salem and Beverly, Massachusetts, 1789–1900, Frank Hitchings, Stephen Willard Phillips, The Essex Institute, Salem, Mass., 1906 the Belisarius, the Herald, the Coromandel, the Persia, the Friendship and others. The ships traded with India, Zanzibar, Madagascar, Sumatra, Java, the Philippines, Malaya and other far-flung trading ports.
Initially a partner of the Salem trading firm of Stone, Silsbees, Pickman & Allen, Pickman later became one of two partners of the firm of Silsbee & Pickman, one of the largest Salem trading houses, operated by Nathaniel Silsbee and Pickman.Dudley Leavitt Pickman was a member of several trading firms with his name in the title, as was his son William Pickman. Other family members were also owners of other Salem shipping and trading firms, so there are a number of such firms with Pickman in the title: Silsbee, Pickman & Allen; Stone, Silsbee & Pickman; Stone, Silsbees, Pickman & Allen; and others. Pickman made much of his early fortune from trade with India. He later helped finance some Indian factories as an owner.Americans in Calcutta Bazaars in the Early Nineteenth Century, Sirajul Islam, The Asiatic Society His firm was so influential that was known in Salem as "The Old East-India Company".The Rich Men of Massachusetts, Abner Forbes, Published by W. V. Spencer, Boston, Mass., 1851
As Pickman's business investments took off, he became an active financier, and owned interests in emerging industries across New England. He was a founding investor in the companies that developed the water power and owned much of the real estate in Lowell, Manchester and Lawrence. He was also a large stockholder in many cotton and woolen mills in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and was a large investor in many early railroad companies.History of Essex County, Massachusetts, Vol. I, D. Hamilton Hurd, J. W. Lewis & Co., Philadelphia, Penn., 1888 In 1818, Pickman purchased 50 shares of the Suffolk Bank, a clearinghouse bank on State Street in Boston.
Pickman was an active merchant, writing to politicians such as Henry Clay to promote his mercantile interests and arguing for the need for protective tariffs.Papers of Henry Clay, Secretary of State, 1825, Vol. 4, James F. Hopkins, The University Press of Kentucky, 1972 Pickman also frequently corresponded with other powerful merchants and statesmen such as Paine Wingate and Samuel Curwen.The Journal and Letters of Samuel Curwen, Samuel Curwen, George Atkinson Ward, Little, Brown & Co., Boston, Mass., 1864
Pickman was heavily involved in nearly all aspects of Salem's municipal and business life. He served with Leverett Saltonstall and Nathaniel Bowditch as trustees of the estate of Simon Forrester. A ship captain born in Ireland, Forrester had become one of the pioneers of Salem merchant shipping and became one of Salem's leading merchants and philanthropists.
The large brick mansion built for Pickman by architect Jabez Smith in 1819 at the corner of Chestnut and Pickering Streets in Salem was later known as the Shreve-Little House (and later still as the Baldwin-Lyman House).The Colonial Architecture of Salem, Frank Cousins, Phil M. Riley, Little, Brown and Co., Boston, 1919Domestic Architecture of the American Colonies and of the Early Republic, Fiske Kimball, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1922 Pickman married on September 6, 1810, Catherine Saunders, daughter of Salem merchant Thomas SaundersThe Saunders family were longtime Salem merchants who built some of the town's earliest warehouses and ships. The surname was sometimes spelled Sanders. and his wife Elizabeth (Elkins) Saunders.A Salem Shipmaster and Merchant, The Autobiography of George Nichols, The Four Seas Company, Boston, Mass., 1921
Dudley Leavitt Pickman was a longtime member of Salem's old North Church. His portrait is owned by the Peabody Essex Museum, where it forms part of a collection of the founders of Salem's East India Marine Society in 1799. In the Massachusetts Historical Society is a copy of William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night from the library of Dudley Pickman Leavitt – a copy of the first publication in America of the English playwright's work.Shakespeariana, Charlotte Endymion Porter, Shakespeare Society of New York, Vol. X, Leonard Scott Publication Co., New York, 1893
Descendants and legacy
Dudley Leavitt Pickman's son William Dudley Pickman continued the family trading enterprises, eventually moving the shipping interests to Boston but retaining a counting house in Salem.William Dudley Pickman, Obituary, Essex Institute Historical Collections, Essex Institute, Peabody Essex Museum, Vol. XXVII, Printed for the Essex Institute, Salem, 1890 William Dudley Pickman married Caroline Silsbee, daughter of Salem merchant Zachariah F. Silsbee. William Dudley Pickman's partner in the Boston-based firm was his son Dudley Leavitt Pickman,Pickman's bookplate placed in the volumes of his library had this inscription: "The wicked borrow and return not." who became a fixture in Boston business and social circles, and a large donor of family art and antiques to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts,Meissen Teapot, Gift of Dudley Leavitt Pickman, Boston Museum of Fine Arts as well as a trustee of Salem's Peabody Museum.Guide to the Peabody Museum, Peabody Museum of Salem, Salem, Massachusetts, 1916
Dudley Leavitt Pickman's daughter Elizabeth became the second wife of Salem merchant Richard Saltonstall Rogers, whose first wife Sarah Crowninshield died young.Eliza Leavitt Pickman, Phillips, Howard, Fay Genealogy, Eighth Generation Pickman's daughter Catherine Saunders married Boston merchant Richard S. Fay. One of Pickman's sons, Edward Motley, attended Harvard Law School, and became a Boston writer.Secretary's Third Report, Harvard College Class of 1908, Decennial Report 1920, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1920
His son Dudley Leavitt Pickman Jr. attended Noble and Greenough School,Secretary's Fourth Report, Harvard College Class of 1907, June 1917, The Plimpton Press, Norwood, Massachusetts, 1917 Harvard College, where he was president of the Hasty Pudding Club,Catalogue of the Members and Library of the Hasty Pudding Club in Harvard, The Marion Press, New York, 1902 and Harvard Law School,Harvard Law Review, Vol. XXIII, 1909–1910, The Harvard Law Review Association, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1910 practiced law in Boston and lived in a 40-room granite mansion, staffed by five servants and designed by architect Stanford White at 303 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, as well as in Beverly, Massachusetts."Society: Open End". Time. July 20, 1962. He served as a director for a number of public companies, including a subsidiary of Calumet and Hecla Mining CompanyThe Manual of Statistics, Lee Higginson & Co., New York and as one of the first three trustees of the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow House National Park site in Cambridge, Massachusetts.Longfellow House Trust, Records, 1852–1973, National Park Service