The Pickering Project
This is a section of Gathering Leaves and represents the compilation of an on-going research effort into the ancestors of Della Pickering.
In chapter five of Gathering Leaves, the Mystery of Della Pickering was introduced and continued in chapter seven. Because of the wealth of clues and leads that has been laid bare regarding this mystery, I thought it best that separate web-pages be devoted to this research effort. While we are not 100% certain of the connection between our "Della Pickering" who married our "Frank Gaume" in 1867 in Wisconsin and who died in June of 1868 with the "Cordilla Pickering" listed as marrying a "Frank Guam" and dying at a young age in Michigan, I would be remiss in not recording what I have been able to learn of the Pickering family who first appears in Salem, Massachusetts, is later found in Central Massachusetts, and is then traced down into Pennsylvania and the old Northwest. I could very well be "barking up the wrong tree", but I believe that unless you follow all possible leads and search for the truth as far as you can possibly go, even if means creeping down blind alleys and stepping through mine-fields of genealogical controversy, you never will find the actual truth.
As I researched this further, I learned that there was more to Della Pickering's pedigree than just the Pickering line and along the way there were some interesting discoveries, such as learning that the pedigree of my great-great grandmother has been traced in some histories to a fictitious character of a play by Shakespeare, and some surprises such as finding a well-documented descent from an ancestor of Della Pickering that connects me as cousin to a US President. Finally, I show how it is possible for to trace my ancestry back to historic figures of English and European nobility and even further to mythic and legendary figures of the dim past.
Legend:
The person is an ancestor of Cordelia Pickering
