American scholar, born in Salem, MA, on the 7th of February 1777; was a son of Colonel Timothy Pickering; graduated at Harvard in 1796; studied law and became secretary to the United States legation to Portugal, and to the minister to Great Britain (1799–1801); after which he returned to Salem, resuming the practice of law, which he prosecuted until 1829, and removed to Boston, where he became city solicitor, holding the office until a short time previous to his death. He served three terms in each house of the state legislature, was a member of the governor’s council, and in 1833 one of the commissioners for revising the state laws. He was the first president of the American Oriental Society, and was one of the first scholars of his time. His publications include A Vocabulary, or Collection of Words and Phrases which have been Supposed to be Peculiar to the United States (1816); On the Adoption of a Uniform Orthography for the Indian Languages of North America (1820); Remarks on the Indian Languages of North America (1836); A Comprehensive Lexicon of the Greek Language, which may be considered his most important work, and which he strove to perfect. It appeared in 1826, and ran through many editions. He died in Boston on the 5th of May 1846.
