Life of Marietta

Youth

Marietta was born in 1831 to Augustus and Caroline Pickering. Her family home is on the west end of Main Street, overlooking Black River Bay. Today, you can visit this house as the Pickering-Beach Museum. When Marietta lived there, the view from her front porch included the boat house that protected the USS New Orleans, begun during the War of 1812 and never completed. She could see, too, her father’s shipbuilding works. And she could walk the two blocks down Main Street to the Union Hotel, owned by her mother’s family, the Whites, who lived in near-by Henderson, New York. Marietta was the middle child, with an older sister and brother and two younger sisters.

Before she was born, the Pickering family came to Sackets Harbor after Marietta’s grandfather, Joshua, had been widowed. He brought his two daughters and his son, Augustus, looking for work in the shipbuilding trade. As a ship carpenter and joiner, it was easy for Joshua to find work in Sackets Harbor in 1813. It was the U.S. Naval Headquarters on the Great Lakes and employed over 3000 men in the Navy Point shipyard. Joshua’s family lived in a tiny cottage until Augustus helped his father build the Pickering house in 1817.

Augustus worked his way up through the shipbuilding trade, eventually owning his own shipbuilding works while also doing business in shipping. He is known to have built and captained the first commercial ship into the harbor at Chicago, in 1834. He called the ship Illinois, and it carried trade goods and settlers moving west. Working his way out of the financial slump of the late 1830’s to early 1840’s, Augustus was determined to build the largest trading ship on the Great Lakes. Indeed, the Columbia was the largest, but it was also a few inches too large to fit through the second lock of the Welland Canal. Over-reacting, Augustus left his ship, went into the woods, cut his own throat and died. The Columbia was shaved down and eventually continued through the lock system.

When their father, Augustus, died in 1844, the children ranged in ages from two to 17 years old. Marietta was thirteen. Soon, older sister, Clarissa and older brother, Gustavas were each married. Marietta and her two younger sisters were still at home when their mother died. Gustavas, who had become a successful business man, took in his three sisters.

Marriage

For several years Marietta lived with her brother, Gustavus, in Saratoga Springs. There she met Dewitt Clinton Hay, whose family had moved from outside of Lake George, in Caldwell, New York. Marietta was thirty-five years old when she married Mr. Hay, in 1865. He was a bank note engraver by profession and an artist in watercolors by passion. He was fourteen years older than Marietta, and a widower. Marietta and Mr. Hay, whom she called Dee, delayed their honeymoon for two years, due to the Civil War. Then, from May 1867 to November 1869 they traveled leisurely through Europe, Egypt, and the Near East. Dee sketched and painted the sights along the way, and Marietta wrote often to her sisters, painting her pictures with words. Marietta and Dee established their home in Tarrytown, New York. Their marriage lasted 22 years, until Dee died, in 1887.