PICKETT, EDWARD BRADFORD (1823-1882). Edward Bradford Pickett, soldier, lawyer, and statesman, son of Hugh W. and Louanna (Looper) Pickett, was born in Virginia in 1823. At age twenty-three, he served as a private during the Mexican War.^qv In 1850 he married Virginia Orange Bell, and they moved to Liberty, Texas. They had five children. Pickett practiced law in several Southeast Texas counties during the 1850s. On May 3, 1862, he was commissioned captain of a company in the Twenty-fifth Texas Cavalry under the command of Col. Clayton C. Gillespie in the service of the Confederate States; he was soon elected to regimental major. After serving in Louisiana, he was reassigned to Arkansas Post, where he and his company were captured by the federals. He was removed to Camp Douglas, Illinois, and in an exchange of prisoners he returned to the Confederate Army and participated in the siege of Chattanooga and in John Bell Hood's^qv Tennessee campaign. At the end of the Civil War,^qv he was discharged as a lieutenant colonel. Pickett was elected as a Democrat to the state Senate in the general election of 1869 and served during the Twelfth and Thirteenth sessions of the legislature. He also served as president of the Constitutional Convention of 1875.^qv He was a member of the Senate Committee on Education when the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas (now Texas A&M University) was established in 1871. Upon organization of the college in 1876, he became president of its first board of directors, a post he held at the time of his death. He died in Liberty, Texas, on January 26, 1882, and was buried in the City Cemetery there.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Miriam Partlow, Liberty, Liberty County, and the Atascosito District (Austin: Pemberton, 1974). Vertical Files, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin.

Barbara H. Fisher