Samuel Pickering Gardner (1767-1843)

He was born in Salem, Massachusetts. He was a nephew of U.S. Secretary of State, Timothy Pickering, and a first cousin of Mrs Lydia (Williams) Lyman who lived at the Lyman Estate in Waltham, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard in 1786 and after four years in business at Charleston in South Carolina, he returned to Boston in 1793. In 1800, he bought the Vassall estate on Summer Street where he lived for the remainder of his life. His house was later replaced by the C.F. Hovey & Co. store. In 1797, he married Rebecca Russell Lowell and they had six children.