Editing Timothy Pickering (section)

==Rise to power==
After the end of the American Revolution, Pickering made several failed attempts at financial success.  In 1783, he embarked on a mercantile partnership with Samuel Hodgdon that failed two years later.  In 1786, he moved to the [[Wyoming Valley]] in Pennsylvania where he assumed a series of offices at the head of [[Luzerne County]].  When he attempted to settle a controversy generated by [[John Armstrong, Jr.|John Armstrong]] who was antagonizing [[Connecticut]] settlers living in the area, Pickering was captured and held hostage for nineteen days.  In 1787, he was part of the Pennsylvania convention held to consider ratification of the [[United States Constitution]].<ref>Pickering and Upham, ''Life of Timothy Pickering'', 1:532–35; 2:140–73, 182–325, 369–445; Clarfield, ''Pickering and the Republic'', 85–115; Jeffrey Paul Brown, "Timothy Pickering and the Northwest Territory," ''Northwest Ohio Quarterly'' 53, 4 (1982): 117–32.</ref>

After the first of Pickering's two successful attempts to make money speculating in [[Pennsylvania]] frontier land, President Washington appointed him commissioner to the [[Iroquois]]; and Pickering represented the United States in the negotiation of the [[Treaty of Canandaigua]] with the Iroquois in 1794.