But his people were missing.
Sometime in the early 1960s, a road-widening forced the removal of 75 of his ancestors' graves, and no query to state or local officials had answered the mystery of where their remains lay.
Three weeks ago, the historian of the Eden Cemetery in Collingdale reached out to the Sag Harbor, N.Y., native. She'd read he was coming to town to tell his family story at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. She'd found records showing that at least four of his ancestors were buried at Eden in unmarked plots.
And so Pickens was making a field trip he'd long imagined. "This is an emotional moment," he said Monday, riding with his wife, Patricia, and son John.
Pickens, a tall, elegant, retired corporate executive with a nimbus of snow-white hair and bright blue eyes, had spent the entire car ride rattling off a daunting series of names and dates concerning his blended family and their distinctive offspring.
But as the car pulled into the cemetery, the 74-year-old patriarch's manner changed. He couldn't wait to get out of the car. "Remarkable," he said, seeming to skip toward the cemetery office. "I've been looking for these folks since 1991."
Mina Cockroft, Eden's general manager, was waiting for her guests with a map, a plastic marker, and a bouquet of silk red roses. Together they rode together up a hill to the Lebanon section, Lot No. 105.
Cockroft pointed, and the car came to a stop next to the gravestone of William Still, the conductor on the Underground Railroad. Pickens smiled. So his people were buried next to the famous Mr. Still.
A cemetery worker brought out a tape measure and a few moments later the group was standing on a grassy spot.
"This is Hiram and Elizabeth," Cockroft said. Pickens had found his great-great-grandparents.
Two years before, he'd presented their portraits to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where they now hang, rare examples of a prosperous African American husband and wife, painted in 1841.
