Hannah Maynard Pickard

1812-1844

The novelist Hannah Maynard (Thompson) Pickard was born on 25 November 1812 in Chester, Vermont. When she was about three years old, her family relocated to Concord, Massachusetts, where she resided for ten years. In the spring of 1826, her family moved to Wilbraham, Massachusetts, her parents taking charge of the boarding establishment associated with the Wesleyan Academy that was located there. Thompson attended school at the Academy.  In 1828, her family moved to Boston where she taught at the Bromfield Street Sabbath School and later at the Russell Street Sabbath School. In 1838, Thompson received and accepted an invitation to become preceptress at the Wilbraham Academy. In the spring of 1839, Thompson met Humphrey Pickard a student at the Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut who graduated in the summer of that year and returned to his native province of New Brunswick, but he and Thompson maintained a correspondence with each other. On 2 October 1841, she married Humphrey Pickard in the Bromfield Street Church in Boston. Shortly thereafter, the couple moved to the Portland parish in Saint John, N.B. where Rev. Pickard was appointed to preach. The Pickards moved to Sackville, New Brunswick in 1843 after Rev. Pickard was appointed principal of the Wesleyan Academy. Mrs. Pickard assisted her husband immensely in both his ecclesiastical and administrative affairs. Hannah Pickard died (in Sackville) on 11 March 1844 at the age of thirty-two. During her short life, Hannah (Thompson) Pickard wrote two novels (both of which were published anonymously as “By a Lady”), the first being Procrastination, or, Maria Louisa Winslow (1840), and The Widow’s Jewels: In Two Stories (1844). She also wrote numerous poems, sketches, and prose fragments centered around religious ideas and/or the beauty of nature, some of which are contained in the Memoir and Writings of Mrs. Hannah Maynard Pickard (1845) that her brother-in-law compiled and published after her death.

Predominant New Brunswick Residences:

Saint John, Sackville

Archival Material

• Hannah Maynard Thompson fonds
  ⌄
  Location

  Mount Allison University Archives

  Website/Catalogue Record

  View Archival Record

  Retrieval Number

  2008.56

  Date Range of Material

  1827-[1839]

  Extent

  1 v of textual records

  Scope and Content Note

      Fonds consists of 1 journal of poetry and prose written by Hannah Maynard Thompson and other persons.