Pickett, Thomas J.

Born: 1821-03-17 Louisville, Kentucky

Died: 1891-12-24 Nebraska

Flourished: 1834 to 1865 Illinois

Thomas J. Pickett, newspaper editor and political official, came to Peoria, Illinois about 1834, where he began a long career in publishing by working as a printer boy for the newly-established Illinois Champion and Peoria Herald. During the course of his professional life he founded or helmed numerous newspapers in Tazewell and Rock Island counties. Pickett was the publisher of the Illinois Palladium in Pekin in 1842, and in 1845 he purchased the Register of Peoria and continued publication of that periodical as the Weekly Register until about 1848. That year he also published the Daily Register for a few months, which was the first daily newspaper in Peoria. In 1849 and 1850 he published the Champion in Peoria, losing the newspaper’s office to fire in the latter year. Later in 1850, Pickett established the Peoria Republican, a Whig newspaper that he published with various partners, ultimately selling the newspaper in 1856. Between 1855 and 1860 Pickett published the Tazewell County Mirror. In 1856 he purchased the Plaindealer newspaper of Pekin and continued publication under the name Tazewell Register as an independent paper with Republican leanings until 1858. Pickett relocated about 1859 to Rock Island, where he edited the Register between about 1859 and 1862. Politically, Pickett was initially a Whig, then an opponent of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and later a Republican. He attended the February 1856 meeting in Decatur, Illinois, in which a group of anti-Nebraska editors and Abraham Lincoln set in motion plans for the 1856 Illinois Anti-Nebraska Convention, which he also attended. Pickett was a delegate from Illinois at the 1856 Republican National Convention and from Tazewell County at the 1858 Illinois Republican Convention. He represented Rock Island County in the Illinois Senate in 1861 and 1863. Pickett had a long acquaintance with Lincoln, having first met him at a Whig convention in Tazewell County in about 1843. Owing to an April 1859 letter to Lincoln in which he proposed a concerted effort by the Republican newspaper editors of Illinois to announce Lincoln’s candidacy for the presidency, Pickett gained the reputation of being the first person to seriously consider Lincoln for the office. Following Lincoln’s election to the presidency Pickett sought a variety of government positions, and was appointed by Lincoln as agent to the U.S. Quartermaster Department at Rock Island in 1861. He served in this capacity until he was removed from office, allegedly due to the actions of a political rival, in 1863. During the Civil War Pickett served for three months in 1862 as a lieutenant colonel in the Sixty-Ninth Regiment of the Illinois Volunteer Infantry, and for an additional three months in 1864 as a colonel in the 132nd Regiment of the Illinois Volunteer Infantry. He was a Freemason. Pickett married first, Louisa Baily (Bailey) in 1841, and second, Elizabeth J. Smith in 1855, and at the time of his death in Ashland, Nebraska he was survived by eight children.

Thomas J. Pickett, “Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln,” Lincoln Herald, introduced by Ernest E. East, 45 (December 1943), 3-10; Newton Bateman and Paul Selby, eds., Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois and History of Peoria County, ed. by David McCulloch (Chicago: Munsell, 1901), 1:424-25; Newton Bateman and Paul Selby, eds., Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois and History of Peoria County, ed. by David McCulloch (Chicago: Munsell, 1902), 2:145, 151-52, 249, 287-88, 416; Franklin William Scott, Newspapers and Periodicals of Illinois, 1814-1879, vol. 6 of Collections of the Illinois State Historical Library (Springfield: Illinois State Historical Library, 1910), lxxvii-lxxviii, 276, 277, 278, 279, 304; Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, Tazewell County, 30 December 1841, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Peoria, Peoria County, IL, 155; Illinois, U.S., Compiled Marriages, 1851-1900, 8 March 1855, Lee County (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2005); Daily Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 30 May 1856, 2:2; 17 June 1858, 2:4; Proceedings of the First Three Republican National Conventions of 1856, 1860, and 1864 (Minneapolis, MN: Charles W. Johnson, 1893), 41; Thomas J. Pickett to Abraham Lincoln; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Ward 3, Rock Island, Rock Island County, IL, 231; John Clayton, comp., The Illinois Fact Book and Historical Almanac, 1673-1968 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1970), 223, 225; Thomas J. Pickett to Abraham Lincoln; Thomas J. Pickett to Abraham Lincoln; Abraham Lincoln to Simon Cameron; Illinois Civil War Muster and Descriptive Rolls, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; Thomas J. Pickett to John G. Nicolay, 30 March 1863, Abraham Lincoln Papers: Series 1. General Correspondence. 1833-1916, Manuscript/Mixed Material, https://www.loc.gov/item/mal2272900/, accessed 1 December 2023; Abraham Lincoln to Calvin Truesdale; Daily Nebraska State Journal (Lincoln), 26 December 1891, 8:3; The St. Joseph Herald (MO), 28 December 1891, 3:3-4; Gravestone, Ashland Cemetery, Ashland, NE.