This site is dedicated to my sister, Judy Pickering, who started researching our family in the pre-internet days, but whose untimely death left many questions unanswered. All I had to work on was that our father, John Leslie Pickering (1911-1991), was the eldest son of Richard Alexander Pickering (1879-1965) and Mabel Elsie Coultish (1884-1968) and the grandson of Frederick Pickering (b.1852) and Sarah Ann Haswell (b.1855), all from the Hull area. Nothing on Richard’s siblings or Frederick’s ancestors, except that his father was also called Richard.

It was easy to find Frederick’s immediate ancestors on the Preston censuses, but little did I know that Richard Alexander was one of ten children. The obvious next step was to search for any living descendants of his siblings. I was able to make contact with some of them easily, but the others took many long hours of research. I am truly grateful to all the people who helped me along the way and especially for the research carried out by George Walker of New Zealand, without which I would never have guessed that the Pickerings had moved around so much within the East Riding.

During my virtual tour of Yorkshire I kept bumping into other Pickerings, which made me wonder if we were related at some point in the distant past. The only way to find out was research all of them! I have tried to cover all the Pickerings and Puckerings (a derivation of Pickering which appeared in the mid 1500s) that I have found in the East and North Ridings and to trace their ancestors and descendants, sometimes beyond the county and the country. Much of the research will have already been done by others, so please check my work, point out the inevitable mistakes and send me any further information you would like me to add.

The aim of this site is to merge as many Pickering families as possible, particularly those with proven roots in Yorkshire, and hopefully, through documentary, circumstantial and DNA evidence, to link them with the town of Pickering in the North Riding.

Hazel Pickering