David Pickett was born 11 Feb 1791 in Rhode Island, being the eldest of eight sons of Job and Lydia (Munson) Pickett. As trail-blazing settlers in early New England, the Pickett family emigrated from England in 1648.
In 1810 David married Amanda Bradley. She died shortly after the loss of an infant son. On 16 Nov 1812 David married young widow Marietta Cowan, mother of a two-year old daughter. At the age of 23 he volunteered at South Granville, N.Y., on 10 Sep 1814 to become a private in Captain Hosea Day’s Company of the New York State Militia. He received his discharge order on 21 Sep 1814 at Burlington, Vermont.
All twelve of David and Marietta’s children were born in Washington County, New York. Later the family moved to Watertown in Jefferson County, where David worked casting molten metal in an iron foundry. When eldest sons Edwin and William were young men, the siblings worked their way to South Bend, Indiana, to become pioneer settlers of the area. Shortly thereafter, their parents and remaining family members also joined them.
In the fall of 1852, the trio of Pickett brothers — Edwin, William, and Joseph — journeyed the pioneer trail from South Bend to the West with the intention of exploring land in southeastern Minnesota Territory. Discovering that their destination’s circumstances surpassed dreams, they returned to Indiana to spend their winter disposing of property and preparing the extended family for life in what became Fillmore County on 5 Mar 1853.
A niece of William Pickett would later document their journey in a family history narrative. “On 1 Jun 1853, conditions being right for maintenance of their stock on the long trip across the prairies, a company of four Pickett families — households of David, Edwin, Joseph, and William — came back to the place the brothers had set their stakes the fall before.” Having reached their new home, David began erecting a log cabin in Carimona Township on the south side of the river about a mile west of the village of Carimona.
Judging from the 1857 Minnesota Territorial census, the first Pickett born in what would shortly become the state of Minnesota was Dorso Leon, son of William and Phebe Pickett in 1853.
David’s name is found on the New Adjutant General’s Office of Albany, New York, Index of Awards on the Claims of Soldiers of the War of 1812. He is listed as a resident of Carimona and allowed a military pension of $9.00. (For comparative purposes, using computations by economic historians of multiplying that amount by the percentage increase in the Consumer Price Index, the relative value to today’s dollar would be approximately $204.)
David died 9 Oct 1868 and was buried in the Carimona Cemetery. His government-issued marble marker was recently the scene of a multi-generational Pickett family group shot: four generations, if you count David himself — the ultimate genealogical photo op.
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