Picton, Thomas
politician, lawyer, soldier, journalist, author, was born May 9, 1822, in New York city. He edited the True National Democrat, the organ of the free-soilers in New York city. On the reorganization of the Sunday Mercury, he became one of its editors, and contributed to the paper a series of popular stories under the name of Paul Preston.
These were subsequently published in book-form, and had an extensive sale.
At the beginning of the civil war he raised a battalion, which was consolidated with the thirty-eighth New York regiment, with which he went to the field. He was the author of Reminiscences of a Sporting Journalist. He died Feb. 20, 1891, in New York city.