rant or security. Pickering took them by force and carried them to the house of Major Joseph Hammond, in Kittery, where they were concealed. Afterwards, in 1692, Pickering was summoned before Lieutenant Governor Usher, threatened and imprisoned, but for some time would neither deliver the books nor discover the place of their concealment, unless by order of the assembly, and to some person appointed by them to receive them. At length, however, he was constrained to deliver them up, and they were handed over to the secretary by Usher's orders. Upon the dissolution of government under Andros, Capt. Pickering was a member of the convention which met in 1690, and recommended a re-union with Massachusetts, which was shortly afterwards carried into effect. In 1690, he and Richard Waldron were chosen representatives for the town of Portsmouth to the assembly which met at Boston. They were also elected to the Massachusetts assembly in 1690, and took their seats in May, that year.§ Mr. P. was present at the December session, which was the fifth assembly holden in 1691. Early in 1697, William Partridge arrived from England, with a commission appointing him lieutenant governor of the province, and commander in chief, in Allen's absence. Usher's commission, as lieutenant governor was expressly revoked, and the council were empowered to act until the lieutenant governor should be qualified. The suspended counsellors, Hinckes, Waldron and Vaughan, resumed their seats at the council board, and Pickering was appointed king's attorney. The president and council having appointed Charles Story secretary of the province

*Belknap, i. 149. Adams, Annals, 90. +Adams, Annals, 96. + Belknap, i. 122. Adams, Annals, 90. § Massachusetts Records, in Secretary's Office. || Massachusetts Records in Secretary's Office. Belknap, i. 152. Adams, Annals, 107.

dence reposed in him by the defendants of this cause, which embraced some of the first men in the province, that he was selected as one of the counsel to defend the homes, the houses and lands of the inhabitants, from the rapacity of the plaintiff and those who were especially interested in his behalf. Charles Story was associated with him as counsel. The verdict of the jury was a confirmation of the former judgment for the defendant, and costs of suit.*

The exact time of Capt. Pickering's death is not ascertained. Through the kindness of John Kelly, Esq., register of probate for the county of Rockingham, we are informed that he made his will 21 June, 1720, and that it was approved 15 May, 1721. He must have been about 80 years of age when he died. His real estate was appraised at 1.3185, and his personal, at only 1.20. 18. He devised to the South Parish in Portsmouth, a lot of ground for a convenient site for a meeting house; to be set off to the said parish, on the highest part of his neck. (Pickering's Neck.) The parish received possession of the lot, and erected their meeting house upon it in 1731, and have had continued possession of it until the present time.

As before remarked, Capt. P. left but one child, Mary, who was the wife of John Plaisted, Esq. one of the provincial counsellors in 1702. His son John, who married Elizabeth Munden in 1688, died about six years before his father, leaving three sons, John, Thomas and Daniel, and three daughters, Mary, who married Ambrose Sloper, Deborah and Sarah.† Of John and Daniel we have no knowledge. Thomas, the second son, commanded a company stationed at Casco, in Maine, in the time of the French and Indian war, and was slain by the Indians in an attack on the fort. His will is dated 18 March, 1745, and was proved 28

* Probate Records. +Oral Communication of Hon. D. P. Drown.

March, 1747. His wife was Dorothy, and his children were John, Daniel, Elizabeth, who married a Lambert, Abigail, born 18 June, 1781, married a Janvrin, and died 16 February, 1832, aged 100 years, 8 months and 3 days, Dorothy, Olive, Lydia and Molly. The late Hon. John Pickering, LL. D., was a native of Newington, and descended from Thomas, the second son of the first John Pickering. §

Notice of the life and character of the late Hon. OLIVER PEABODY, of Exeter.

Few persons have been more generally respected and beloved in the circle of those who knew them, than the late Judge Peabody; and it is believed that a concise recapitulation of the principal circumstances of his life will not be wholly uninteresting to his numerous surviving friends. He was the son of Oliver Peabody, and was born at Andover, Massachusetts, 2 September, 1752, N. S.* His father was a respectable culti

Probate Records. § It is hoped that the gentlemen who furnished most of the preceding Sketch, will prepare a memoir of Judge Pickering, for a succeeding volume of the Society's Collections,

* The Peabody family came early to New-England. Francis Peabody, whom we suppose to be the great ancestor of Judge Peabody, settled in Hampton in 1639, at which time he was a married man. (Belknap, Hist. N. H. i. 21.) He left Hampton, and was a resident in Topsfield in 1661. (MS. Records.) The family has continued in Topsfield, or Boxford, which we believe was separated from Topsfield in 1685, ever since that period. John Peabody, who was admitted freeman in 1674, represented Boxford in the two courts summoned to meet at Boston, 23 May and 5 June, 1689; at the two courts which met 8 October and 10 December, 1690; and at the two courts, holden 14 October and 10 December, 1691. He might have been father to Rev. Oliver Peabody, of Natick, Mass., who was born in Boxford in 1698, graduated at Harvard College, 1721, and died 2 February, 1752. Rev. Oliver Peabody, of Roxbury, Mass., was son of Mr. Peabody, of Natick. He graduated at Harvard College in 1745, was ordained 7 November, 1750; died 29 May, 1752. Jacob Peabody, of Boxford, whose father died 24 November, 1689, was born 6 November, 1689, and died 24 July, 1749, (MS. Gen. Nathaniel Peabody) leaving a son, Jacob Peabody, who was a physician, and born 18 February, 1713; married Susanna, daughter of Rev. John Rogers, of Boxford, by whom he had 12 children.

vator, wholly unknown to public life, but who, in one of his excursions into New-Hampshire, met with an adventure which has connected his name with the geography of the country, and which, for that reason, as well as for its singularity, may perhaps with propriety, be mentioned here. He was passing the night in the cabin of an Indian, situated on the side of a mountain in the neighborhood of Saco river. The inmates of this rude dwelling were awakened in the course of the night by a loud noise, and had scarcely time to make their escape, before the hut was swept away by a torrent of water rushing impetuously down the hill. On reconnoitreing the ground, they found that this torrent had burst out suddenly from a spot where there was no spring before. It has continued flowing ever since, and forms the branch of the Saco which bears the name of Peabody's River.

Judge Peabody was educated at Harvard College, where he took his first degree in 1773, at the age of twenty. Among his contemporaries at College, were Gov. Gore, Gov. Eustis, Lieut. Gov. Lincoln, Dr. John Warren, Professor Pearson, and Fisher Ames. His class was the first which was arranged according to the alphabetical order of the names of the members. Before that

time the usage had been to give precedence to such as were supposed to possess superior claims on the score of the rank of their parents. This change was doubtless one among many more important indications of the change of political feeling in the country, which resulted three years after in the Declaration of Independence. The standard of education at Cambridge was then somewhat less elevated than it is now, and the

The late Gen. Peabody, of Exeter, was one of them. Dr. Peabody died in 1758. The name of Paybody was early in the colony of Plymouth; but whether the same with Peabody, or whether related, we are unable to determine.