Cumberland County, Maine - Samuel T. Pickard
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Biography
Samuel T. Pickard
Biographical Review
Cumberland County, Maine
Boston
Biographical Review Publishing Company
1896
Page 519-520


Samuel T. Pickard, of the Portland Transcript, friend and s biographer of the
poet Whittier, was born in Rowley, Mass., March 1, 1828. His parents were Samuel
and Sarah (Coffin) Pickard. His father, also a native of Rowley, born March 7,
1793, in early man hood was a teacher. Removing to Lewiston,Me., in 1832, to
become the Treasurer of the Lewiston Manufacturing Company, he held that
position for forty years. At one time he owned the whole of the land on which
the company's factories were afterward built. An early abolitionist, in politics
he affiliated with the old Liberty party. Before coming to Maine he had served
as Representative from Rowley to the State legislature. He died November 9,
1872, aged seventy-nine years. Mr. Samuel Pickard was twice married. His wife
Sarah, the mother of Samuel T., was a daughter of Joseph Coffin, of Newburyport
,a descendant of Tristram Coffin, who came from Devonshire, England, to this
country in 1642, and was in Newbury, Mass., in 1648. The Coffin homestead on
High Street, Newburyport, was built by his son Tristram, Jr., in 1655.

Mrs. Sarah Coffin Pickard was a sister of Joshua Coffin, Whittier's
schoolmaster, of whom the poet wrote:-

Olden teacher, present friend,
Wise with antiquarian search
In the scrolls of State and Church,
Named on history's title-page
Parish-clerk and justice sage.

Mrs. Pickard and her husband were members of the Congregational church. She died
in her early married life, leaving four children.

Samuel T. Pickard was a child of but four years when his parents removed to
Maine. After completing a course of study in Lewiston Falls Academy, he came to
Portland in 1844 to serve an apprenticeship to the printing trade, almost on the
spot where the Transcript is now located.  Later he went to Boston, where he
was connected with B. P. Shillaber's humorous paper, The Carpet Bag; and in 1852
he returned to Portland to take an interest in the Eclectic. Three years later
this publication was merged in the Transcript, a weekly of great strength,
founded nearly twenty years before. Mr. Pickard is editor and one of the
proprietors of the Transcript, and has been connected with the paper longer than
any one else.

His most important literary work of recent years has been the "Life and Letters
of John Greenleaf Whittier," published in two volumes by Houghton & Mifflin. The
task was committed to Mr. Pickard by Whittier's desire, and, as the result
shows, was a labor of love from beginning to end, presided over by excellent
judgment and discrimination. This biography is a revelation of Whittier, the man
and the poet, as he was known to few even of his contemporaries. In regard to
the antislavery movements this work shows that he bore an important part in the
struggle, that, as has been remarked, " his stirring lyrics were the outward and
visible signs of a life of unceasing activity," influential through his
intercourse with public men. The story of the poet's literary life is given in
detail, and is full of interest. To quote from the Independent (New York):
"Nothing better need be said of the author and his work than that, by his
diligence, devotion, and good judgment, he has erected this scattered and
fragmentary correspondence into a memorial whole, where the poet lives and
speaks as he did among his friends when on earth." The Reader, London, England,
of March 8, 1895, thus reviews the work:" The biographer of John Greenleaf
Whittier has done his work with skill and taste. He is an enthusiastic admirer
of the singer, but he does not nauseate the reader with eulogy. He draws a vivid
picture of the man -in boyhood, in the prime of life, and in the dignity and
beauty of old age. He interprets for us the moods, of the poet, the influences
that molded him and made him what he was in the national story of America and in
the literature of the English speaking peoples, with a sympathy and discernment
that bespeaks to the full his fitness for the task. He makes us love the man the
more, and to read in his verse a deeper significance than its mellifluous form
conveys to those who may not hitherto have comprehended the graces of the poet's
character. . . . We would that we had space in which to tell of the charm of
the, letters Mr. Pickard has printed, and, above all, of the delightful picture
the biographer draws of Whittier's old age-an old age wherein was no
querulousness, but an even calm, an almost unearthly picturesqueness and moral
grace.... We are grateful to Mr. Pickard for having recreated so fine a
character. He has done his work excellently so well, indeed, as to have dowered
the poet's verse with an added wealth of meaning."

Mr. Pickard was married April 19, 1876, to Miss Elizabeth Whittier, a niece of
the poet, in whose household she was reared, being a daughter of Matthew F.
Whittier, his younger and only brother. Mr. and Mrs. Pickard have one son,
Greenleaf Whittier, the poet's namesake, who is still in school.