Dudley Leavitt Pickman

Dudley Leavitt Pickman (1779–1846) was a Salem, Massachusetts, merchant who built one of the great Salem trading firms during the seaport's ascendancy as a trading power in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. 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, 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.

Dudley Leavitt Pickman was born at Salem, Massachusetts, in May 1779, the second son of Salem's chief Naval Officer, William Pickman (1779–1815) and his wife Elizabeth (Leavitt) Pickman, daughter of Dudley Leavitt, 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 a position in 1799 as a clerk for Chief Customs Collector Major Joseph Hiller. 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.

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). In 1804 the East-India Marine Society moved to the Pickman Building on Essex Street, which had been specially fitted for the society.

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