Joseph Lazarus10 Pearson (John "Thomas"9, Lazarus8, Ichabod7, Ichabod6, Jonathan5, Peter4, Christopher3, William2 Pearson?, John1 Pearson) was born 02 Jun 1859 in Sophia, Randolph Co., NC, and died 27 Jun 1944 in "Mount Vernon," now known as "Cloney House," on present-day U.S. Highway 15, Briery, Prince Edward Co., VA. He married (1) Mary Elizabeth Deans 10 Jan 1881 in Wayne Co., NC, daughter of Thomas Anderson Deans and Edith Howell. She was born 18 Jan 1861 in Fork Township, Wayne Co., NC and died 12 Dec 1917 in "Mount Vernon, " Briery, Prince Edward Co., VA. He married (2) Virginia Alexander Perrow 15 Jan 1920 in Baltimore, Baltimore Co., MD, daughter of William Adolphus Perrow and Ella Tunstall Walker. She was born 24 Apr 1883 in Gladys, Campbell Co., VA, and died 30 Oct 1955 in 4610 Fairmont Street, Lynchburg, VA.
Notes for Joseph Lazarus Pearson:
Comments by Bryan S. Godfrey, great-grandson of Joseph Lazarus Pearson by his second marriage to Virginia Alexander Perrow:
Joseph Lazarus Pearson, the eldest of the eight children of John "Thomas" Pearson and Dicena Newlin Pearson, was born June 2, 1859. At this time his parents were living on a farm at Sophia in Randolph County, North Carolina, near where his mother's parents, Joseph and Ruth Farlow Newlin, lived at New Market. Joseph was named for his grandfathers, Joseph Newlin and Lazarus Pearson, both of whom were respected Quakers and had served as early trustees of New Garden Boarding School at Greensboro, North Carolina, which became Guilford College in 1888. Joseph's parents met while attending this Quaker academy. Joseph and his three eldest siblings, John, William, and Emily, were birthright members of Marlboro Friends Meeting at Sophia, to which the family of their mother had belonged since her mother's people, the Farlows, settled in that area in the mid-1700's. Interestingly, at the time of his birth in 1859, all of Joseph's grandparents and four of his great-grandparents were still living. His living great-grandparents were Thomas Edgerton, III (1785-1863) and Absilla Pike Edgerton (1788-1865) of Buck Swamp Township, Wayne County, North Carolina; Nathaniel Newlin (1768-1867) of Bloomingdale, Parke County, Indiana; and Isaac Farlow (1767-1860) of Randolph County, North Carolina. Joseph probably saw his Great-Grandfather Farlow as an infant, but whether he ever saw his Edgerton great-grandparents is not known, but doubtful since his parents did not move to Wayne County until 1865. It is assumed that his Great-Grandfather Newlin never returned to North Carolina after settling in Indiana in 1826. Since Joseph lived to become a great-grandfather himself, he lived through seven generations of his family.
Joseph's paternal grandfather, Lazarus Pearson, died in March, 1865, and it was probably later that year that his parents moved to Wayne County in time for his father to become administrator of the estate. Joseph's maternal grandfather also died in August of that year. The remainder of Joseph's childhood was spent in Wayne County's Fork Township, along present-day Route 581, where the Pearson property was alongside the southern shore of Little River. In August, 1995, the John Thomas Pearson home, which was probably built by Thomas, was still standing on Route 581 next to Luke's Auto but had been condemned. It had been occupied by a black family many years, and by 1995 a new predominantly African-American neighborhood had been developed on the old Pearson estate. The only old homes there at that time were the Thomas Pearson place and the Lazarus Pearson home across the road and nearer to what was formerly known as Pearson Bridge, where Route 581 crosses the Little River. The African-American family who owned the Lazarus Pearson home at this time, Mr. and Mrs. Charlie Lofton, knew their home as the "old Joe Sasser place." It was from John W. Sasser that Lazarus Pearson bought 1000 acres on the south side of Little River in the 1850's. After moving to Wayne County, Joseph and his siblings were affiliated with Nahunta Friends Meeting, where the Pearson family had worshipped ever since Ichabod Pearson I, Joseph's great-grandfather, moved to Wayne County from Perquimans County, North Carolina in 1776. The other four children of Thomas and Dicena, James, Minnie, Mary, and Thomas Oliver, were born in Wayne County.
Joe and his brother John were attending New Garden Boarding School when their father died of typhoid fever in 1877 at the age of forty. As the eldest boys in a family of eight children, one of whom had already died in infancy, they quit school to help their mother run the farm. Their father had a cotton gin between his house and Pearson Bridge which Joseph and John operated in addition to farming the land. Like many of the Pearsons, Joe and John were mechanically gifted, and Joe eventually operated a shop on the property.
Following his marriage to Mary Elizabeth Deans, Joseph lived in his Grandfather Pearson's home across from his mother, the one known as the Joe Sasser place. According to "History of the Pearson Family of Wayne County, North Carolina 1700-1981" (1982) by Joseph's niece, Ruth Pearson Harper (1901-1985) of Roanoke, Alabama, daughter of his brother John, all of Joseph's children by Mary were born on this farm. Joseph and Mary had eight children. Luby, who was probably the eldest, died in infancy, and no dates of birth and death have been found for him. Another daughter, Rella, died at age nine in 1900, said to have been from pneumonia. Where she and Luby are buried is unknown, but it was probably the Pearson-Lewis-Gurley-Edgerton family plot north of the Little River, though no graves have been found for them. Joseph's spinster aunt, Elizabeth F. ("Lizzie") Pearson (1842-1927), lived with Joseph and Mary in her parents' home until the fall of 1887, when she moved to Ackworth, Iowa. Joseph's mother died of pneumonia in 1897 at the age of sixty, and after her death, the Pearson homestead began to break up as her children moved away. Most of the original heirs of the Lazarus Pearson estate, consisting of Joseph's father and his aunts and uncles, had either died young and unmarried or had gone West, and Joseph's father was the only surviving child of Lazarus Pearson who remained in Wayne County. The homestead had passed out of the family by 1912.
Joseph and Mary's youngest child, Edgar Paul Pearson, known as Paul or Polly, was born in 1901, so it was probably after his birth that they moved to town at Goldsboro, the seat of Wayne County, about ten miles away from Fork Township. They lived in a house called Bellevue which later burned down. It is uncertain as to what type of work Joseph did after they moved to town, but according to the 1910 census, he was a sawyer. It is likely that he did machining work and owned a shop since he was mechanically gifted and good at woodwork. He enjoyed making furniture, and while living in Goldsboro, a table he made was pictured in the Goldsboro newspape
According to Mrs. Harper in her Pearson book, Joseph grew weary of the unhealthful conditions of the swampy lowlands of Eastern North Carolina, which resulted in frequent bouts of malarial chills and typhoid fever, and began to seek land on higher ground. She mentioned that in 1910 he wrote a letter to his Uncle Oliver Newlin in which he considered purchasing land near him in Randolph, his native county, but the price was too high. He then toured the southern part of Virginia and finally found a farm which suited him in Prince Edward County, about three miles from Keysville in Charlotte County.
On February 7, 1911, Joseph and Mary moved from Goldsboro to the "Mount Vernon" farm at Briery in Prince Edward County, Virginia with their children John, Minnie, Harvey, Ross, and Paul. Their only surviving child who did not accompany them was daughter Annie Pearson Edwards (1886-1958), who was already married with children and remained in Wayne County, moving to Goldsboro in her later years. The other children were not married yet. "Mount Vernon" was a farm of about 340 acres located on the Farmville Road (present-day U.S. 15) about a quarter mile north of the intersection of State Route 654 with Route 15. This area is known as Briery and is very near the boundary between Prince Edward County and Charlotte County.
Joseph was an early owner of a Model T Ford. How he and his family made the move to Virginia in 1911 is uncertain. It was rather late by then for them to have come on horseback, and since automobiles were still very rare and owned almost exclusively by the wealthy, they probably came by train.
Either before or upon moving to Virginia, Joseph forfeited the Quaker affiliation of his ancestors and became a Methodist.
Mary was very feeble after giving birth to her youngest child. This could have been part of the reason why Joseph sought a home on higher ground. She then was stricken with tuberculosis and died December 12, 1917, six years after moving to Virginia, at the age of fifty-six. By this time daughter Minnie was married to H. Ashley Tuggle (1866-1955) and living in town at Keysville, but all of the sons were still living on the farm.
As a strong believer in self-reliance and the Protestant work ethic, Joseph is said to have worked his sons very hard on his farm, so much so that it is believed at least one of them rebelled and moved on to other lines of work. None of Joseph and Mary's children except Ross took up farming. Minnie lived at Keysville, where her husband Ashley Tuggle was a machinist who was heir to his father's fortune acquired from having invented a better type of exterior light for trains. The oldest surviving son, John, remained a bachelor and eventually left the farm in favor of employment at a hardware store in Keysville. Harvey moved to Richmond and became a watch repairman. Ross went to Norfolk, worked for the Norfolk and Western Railroad as a steam shovel operator, and returned to Briery shortly thereafter where he continued working for the railroad and also engaged in farming on the property of his wife's family. Edgar "Paul" Pearson (1901-1980), the youngest, joined the Navy and after marriage lived near Altavista in Campbell County, Virginia, where he worked for the Lane Company.
Two years after Mary died, at the age of sixty Joseph married Virginia Alexander ("Virgie") Perrow on January 15, 1920, a native of Campbell County, Virginia, who was 24 years his junior. There are two conflicting stories concerning how Joseph and Virgie met. The first, as told by his daughter Minnie, states that Joseph was attending a fair where Virgie was demonstrating a sewing machine for the Singer Sewing Machine Company, for which she worked in Norfolk. The second story, as remembered by Joseph and Virgie's daughters Ella and Virginia, states that they met somehow through Virgie's cousin, Mary Gordon Moon Parker, of Lynchburg, Virginia. Perhaps both stories are partially true, and maybe Mary Gordon was with Virgie at the fair when she met Joseph. Joseph and Virgie were married at Baltimore, Maryland, which is where Virgie's sister Ora and husband, Welford Garner, lived. Virgie and Ora were particularly close, as they had lived together and worked in Norfolk before marriage. Virgie's parents, William "Adolphus" Perrow, Sr. and Ella Walker Perrow of Campbell County, issued wedding invitations, and one of them was inherited by daughter Ella.
Joseph and Virgie had three daughters, Ella Perrow, Virginia Ford, and Ora Garner. Ella was named for Virgie's mother, Ella Walker Perrow, Virginia's middle name was for a Ford family that lived near the Pearsons, and Ora was named for Virgie's sister in Baltimore. When Ella, the oldest, was born, Joseph was almost 62 years old and Virgie was 38, and his oldest grandchild was fifteen at the time!
As a talented man of many interests, Joseph established a self-sufficient farm at Briery and was relatively prominent compared to his neighbors as shown by the fact that when the Depression came on, his mortgage was already paid off. His farm had a spring which was dammed up to form a large pond, where Joseph built a grist mill from which he produced meal and feed. He was one of the early owners of the typewriter, with which he frequently wrote letters to his family using stationery with a letterhead, "Joseph L. Pearson, Manufacturer of Meal & Feed, General Farming." This no doubt influenced two of his daughters by his second wife Virgie, Ella and Virginia, to go to business school and become secretaries.
Joseph continued his woodworking hobby in Virginia and made furniture. After marrying Virgie, he made a cedar chest for Virgie's mother, Ella Walker Perrow, who ironically was four months younger than he! He and Virgie attached a typewritten note to the inside of it as follows: "To Mother, With unmitigated love and in appreciation of her great kindness to us. Virgie and Joseph make her this little present which we hope she will accept and that it will be of service with love." It is said that Joseph grew the tree from which he got the wood to make this chest, but since he moved to Virginia in 1911 and Ella Perrow died in 1927, this is doubtful, considering how slow cedar trees grow. Virgie's youngest sister, Phanie Perrow Flynn, inherited this chest from their mother. After Phanie's death in 1995, her daughter, Marguerite Flynn Harry of McCormick, South Carolina, insisted it go back to the Pearson family and in January, 2000 graciously gave it to me, a grandson of Joseph and Virgie's daughter Ella. I now use it to store framed family portraits which I hope to hang someday when I live in a larger place.
Joseph also enjoyed reading and music. He played several musical instruments, including the banjo, and he and Virgie had a piano. An avid reader, Joseph acquired a respectable library and is especially remembered for being one of the early subscribers to "National Geographic" magazine, of which he accumulated many volumes.
Joseph farmed cotton, strawberries, grapes, and other crops. According to Ruth Pearson Harper in her book, her father, John Newlin Pearson, rooted scuppernong and muscadine grape vines and mailed them to his brother Joseph to plant on his farm. One of the longest trips of John's life was to visit Joseph, and Joseph also returned to North Carolina occasionally to visit his family.
Even though she was 32 years his junior, Joseph was especially close with his first cousin, Hessie Newlin Davis (1891-1979) of Sophia, North Carolina, daughter of Joseph's uncle Oliver Newlin (1842-1934). Hessie and her husband Jerome visited Joseph and Virgie when their five children and Joseph and Virgie's daughters were very young. Joseph frequently wrote to Hessie, and in 1996, Hessie's daughters, Mary Alice Davis Allred (1918-1997) and Emily Davis Pugh (1922-2004) of Trinity, North Carolina, began insisting on giving these and other Newlin family memorabilia to Joseph and Virgie's great-grandson, Bryan Godfrey. In a letter to Hessie dated March 29, 1919, Joseph discusses having bought a full carat, gold Tiffany diamond ring for $200 for a woman he intends to marry, without giving her name, but of course it is Virgie he is referring to. He also refers to a failed romance he had with a girl who lived near Hessie at Sophia, whom he only refers to as "O." Emily Pugh says this is Ora Loflin Farlow (1892-1978), who apparently courted Joseph after Mary's death and before she met her husband, a distant cousin of Joseph and Hessie. It is coincidental that Joseph courted a women named Ora before meeting Virgie, who had a sister and an aunt named Ora, for whom they would name their youngest daughter. In a letter to Hessie dated May 15, 1927, Joseph states that all his boys were gone from the farm and he and Virgie were busy there raising their three small girls. He was apparently replying to a note from Hessie about the deaths of their uncle, Duncan Newlin (1839-1927), his wife Lodoski, and another uncle, Franklin Farlow, within a short time. In this letter Joseph indicates he does not hear from his siblings very often, that he heard his sister Emily had remarried and moved near Hessie, and that there had been strained relations between him and some of his brothers concerning the settlement of their mother's estate.
Because he lived away from his family, Joseph's daughters by Virgie did not know their father's kinfolk in North Carolina. Most of his siblings died either before or shortly after they were born. However, Joseph and his family received occasional visits from his relatives, including his brother John, John's children Earl, Ruth, Sallie, and Mary, his brother Jimmy in Goldsboro, and his youngest brother Oliver and wife Clyde in Memphis, Tennessee. Joseph's daughters Ella and Virginia also recall a visit from some drably dressed Quaker relations whom Virginia remembers were Newlins. But it was mainly Virgie's family in the Lynchburg, Virginia area who visited the Pearsons often, as they would take the train to Briery and get off where the tracks ran behind the "Mount Vernon" property.
Two of Joseph's nieces, Margaret Pearson Hicks (1910-2004) of Cary, North Carolina, daughter of his brother William, and Esther Edgerton Allen (1911-2004) of Rocky Mount, North Carolina, and Virginia Beach, Virginia, daughter of Joseph's sister Mary, said they never met their Uncle Joseph. Mary Pearson Edgerton died in childbirth at age 41 in 1915, and her husband Haskell remarried shortly thereafter.
Joseph continued working on his farm and had a sharp mind until the end. He suffered a heart attack and died three weeks later at home on June 27, 1944 at the age of eighty-five. Virgie wrote a letter to Hessie on June 25, 1944 stating that the doctors were giving them very little hope since Joseph's heart attack. Since Joseph died two days later, he was probably already dead by the time Hessie received it. Jim Jones of Gladys, Virginia, the husband of Virgie's sister Ilene, was a wheelwright and furnished the casket in which Joseph was buried. He was buried beside his first wife Mary and their son John, who died nine years before Joseph, at Ash Camp Baptist Church on Route 40 at Keysville.
Fortunately, Joseph lived long enough to see his three daughters by Virgie get married. Ella and her husband, Ray Overstreet, were living in Newport News, Virginia and working in the Newport News Shipbuilding. Ora and her new husband, Wilbur Dowdy, were also living temporarily in Newport News, as he was in the U.S. Navy and she was working for the telephone company. Virginia, the middle daughter, who at her father's insistence was known as Ford growing up but became known as Virginia after his death, was living at the Pearson farm when Joseph died with her infant daughter Carolyn. Her husband, Ed Wheeler, was also in the Navy.
Shortly after his death, Virgie sold Joseph's farm and most of his belongings that the heirs did not want. His grandson, Hugh Pearson Tuggle (1919-2001), bought his Model T Ford from the estate and drove it for several years before it wound up on a car lot at Chase City, Virginia. Many of Joseph's antiques, including his clocks, were acquired by his son Ross, whose sons became avid antique collectors and still preserve them in their homes at Briery. Virgie moved with her daughter Virginia to Lynchburg and outlived Joseph by eleven years.
Interest in clocks and watches has run in the Pearson family. Joseph's youngest brother, Oliver, became a jewelry, watch, and clock repairman and merchant at Memphis, Tennessee. Joseph's son Harvey followed this vocation in the backyard shop of his home at 4211 Stonewall Avenue in the Forest Hills subdivision of Richmond. In the third generation, Joseph's grandson, H.P. Tuggle, continued this trade in his backyard shop behind his late parents' Victorian home on Route 360 at Keysville.
The "Mount Vernon" estate passed through several owners before it was restored by the Dunn family in the early 1990's, who sold it shortly thereafter. By erecting bricks and columns around the outside while leaving the inside intact, the Dunns made it a mansion, a lot more pretentious than it looked when the Pearsons owned it. The original home was said to have been built by slaves before the Civil War, and it had a graveyard behind it, but no tombstones remain. The property was for sale again in 1998 for about $700,000. When the movie "Sommersby" was being filmed near there at Charlotte Court House in the early 1990's, the lead actor, Richard Gere, stayed in the home. Ross Pearson's sons, who lived very near the homeplace, and were excellent cooks and hosts, graciously hosted several family get-togethers at which they took family members to see their grandfather's home since its restoration.
Since he abandoned Quakerism, most of Joseph's descendants are probably unacquainted with the Quaker, or Friends, faith, yet it is a unique tradition for which they should be very proud. It is mainly because Quaker meetings recorded births, deaths, marriages, and other events in the lives of their members, that Joseph's family is well-traced on most sides, even back to the 1600's and earlier in England and Ireland. Beginning in the 1930's, William Wade Hinshaw compiled these records of Quaker meetings, which in 1950 he published as several volumes entitled "Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy." Joseph's family and distant cousins were also fortunate because their family histories were preserved in numerous books and articles written on their ancestral families, nearly all of which can be found in the North Carolina Friends Historical Collection in the Guilford College Library at Greensboro. Founded in the 1650's by George Fox and others who acquired followers among the farmers and artisans of northern England, where the Pearsons originated, the Society of Friends became known as Quakers originally out of derision due to their unusual worship practices. Since their faith opposed the rigid formalities and perceived superficialities of the Church of England, or Established Church, Quakers were persecuted in England and Ireland in the late 1600's and early 1700's. This is the main reason for why Joseph's ancestors settled in America, mainly in Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. Several of the ones who came to Pennsylvania were friends of William Penn, who successfully established a Quaker Utopia in his colony which became a model for the new government of the United States in 1787.
Quakers were unprecedented in advocating humanitarian ideals which stood far ahead of their time, including peace, equality, liberty, tolerance, temperance, simplicity, and humility. They extended personal liberty and equality to encompass all persons, including women and non-whites, and because of this, Quakers were early leaders in promoting antislavery and campaigning for humane treatment and equality of the sexes, races, and social classes. With several exceptions, most of Joseph's family opposed slavery and went to Indiana and other non-slave areas of the Midwest during the early 1800's, and the ones who remained in North Carolina aroused jealousy and antipathy from their slaveholding neighbors because they were able to acquire wealth without slaves. The stereotypes most people have of Quakers as being drab and plain-clothed is mainly due to early Quaker perceptions that pride is sinful and that is is best to practice moderation while avoiding pretentiousness. Furthermore, Quakers were noted for promoting higher education and literacy for all, including women, in a day when it was rare, especially among agrarian families in the South. As a result, Joseph Pearson's family and distant relations were well-connected with Guilford College, and numerous family members have achieved distinction in scholarly pursuits far out of proportion to the average family. The distinctive academic successes of Quakers has been attributed to a theory that their superior thinking abilities stemmed from the Quaker belief that one's thought processes and prayer should be guided by meditation and the Inner Light.
Joseph shared common American ancestors with both Quaker Presidents of the United States, Herbert Hoover and Richard Nixon. According to his grandson Dan Pearson, Joseph claimed to be related to Hoover, but it is not known what basis he had to make that claim since the connection was remote and he had no way of knowing his actual connections to Hoover through both the Elliott family of North Carolina and the French family of New Jersey on his father's side. Perhaps it was because Hoover was descended from a Pierson family of Pennsylvania, but there is no known kinship to Joseph's Quaker Pearsons of North Carolina. He was also distantly related to the second Quaker President, Richard Milhous Nixon, several ways by both blood and marriage, the blood connections being through both the Mendenhall and Maris families of Pennsylvania.
The following is my great-grandfather's obituary in the "Richmond Times-Dispatch," June 29, 1944:
Pearson Rites Set for Today At Farmville [incorrect--near Keysville]
FARMVILLE--Joseph L. Pearson, 85, died at his home near Keysville, June 27. He was a son of Thomas and Dicena Pearson, of Guilford [incorrect--Wayne County], N.C. He is survived by his wife, Mrs. Virginia Perrow Pearson, three sons, J.H., of Richmond; O.L. of Keysville; and E.P. Pearson, of Altavista; five daughters, Mrs. H.A. [Minnie] Tuggle and Mrs. E.L. [Virginia] Wheeler, of Keysville; Mrs. L.D. [Annie] Edwards, of Goldsboro, N.C.; Mrs. M.R. [Ella] Overstreet and Mrs. W.C. [Ora] Dowdy, of Newport News; two brothers [James R. Pearson of Goldsboro, NC and T. Oliver Pearson of Memphis, TN] and a sister [Emily Pearson Smith Bulla of Wilmington, NC].
The funeral will be held at 2 P.M. Thursday, at the home. Interment will be in the family cemetery [incorrect--Ash Camp Baptist Church, Keysville]. The Rev. Mr. Boyd will have charge of the services.
The following longer obituary was located and emailed to me in 2013 by a fellow findagrave.com contributor:
The Charlotte Gazette
Drakes Branch VA
Thursday
July 13, 1944
Joseph Lazarus Pearson Buried at Ash Camp
Funeral services for Joseph Lazarus Pearson, aged 85, were held at Ash Camp Cemetery, Keysville, June 29, Rev. G.H. Boyd of the Methodist Church conducting the services.
The deceased was a resident of Goldsboro, N.C., until 1910, when the family moved to the present home near Keysville. He was twice married, his first wife being Miss Mary Elizabeth Deane of Goldsboro, who preceded him to the grave in 1917. Five children survive this union, as follows: Mrs. Luby Edwards of Greensboro; J.H. Pearson, of Richmond; Mrs. H.A. Tuggle and O.R. Pearson, Keysville, and E.P. Pearson, of Altavista. Several years later he married Miss Virginia Perrow of Concord, Va. Three daughters survive this union, who are Mrs. Roy Overstreet and Mrs. Wilbur Dowdy of Newport News, and Mrs. E.L. L. Wheeler of Keysville. Also one sisters, Mrs. Dan Bulla, of Wilmington, N.C., and two brothers, J.R. Pearson, of Goldsboro, N.C., and T.O. Pearson, of Memphis, Tenn., with seventeen grand children and five great grand children.
The fllwing were pallbearers; Thomas Hogan, Raleigh younger, P.B. Thompson, E.M. Arvin, H.D. Peters, H.L. Wheeler and Floyd Garrett.
The honorary pallbearers were Lewis V. Pettus, L.J. Yeaman, Hogan Waddell, G.E. Garrett, L.P. Sheppard, Hubert Clark and Dick Epperson.
Flower bearers: Raymond Pearson, Reginald Pearson, Dan Pearson, Kathryn Pearson, Mary Tuggle, Helen Sue Tuggle, Billy Tuggle, Thomas Younger, Ruth Morgan, Robert Perrow, Mrs. Mason, Ruby Dowdy and Olaf Waddell.
More About Joseph Lazarus Pearson:
Burial: Unknown, Ash Camp Baptist Church, Rt. 40, Keysville, VA
Cause of Death: Myocarditis; heart attack; suffered a heart attack three weeks before he died
Census: 1910, Living at Goldsboro, Wayne Co., NC. Occupation--sawyer.
College: 1877, Attended New Garden Boarding School (now Guilford College) at Greensboro, NC; had to quit school at age 18 following his father's death from typhoid fever
Ethnicity/Relig.: Raised as a Quaker in Marlboro and Nahunta Friends Meetings in North Carolina; abandoned the Quaker tradition of his ancestors and became Methodist after moving to Virginia in 1911 (but may have become Methodist before moving to Virginia)
Event: He and his immediate family had good mechanical ability and inventiveness. On 26 Apr 1897, while living at "Goldsborough, " he filed a patent to the U.S. Patent Office for a pipe wrench; patented 15 Jun 1897, No. 27211. It used a single piece of steel.
Medical Information: Is said to have cut 3 sets of teeth
Occupation: Farmer and cotton gin operator in North Carolina on the Pearson family homestead; apparently had a mechanic's shop while living at Goldsboro, NC, ca. 1897; farmer & meal/feed manufacturer in Virginia.
Personality/Intrst: Collected "National Geographic" magazines; enjoyed music and woodworking; made many pieces of furniture and cedar chests; was one of the early owners of a typewriter and a Model T Ford
Residence 1: Rt. 581, Fork Township, Wayne Co., NC (1865-abt 1900); Bellevue, Goldsboro, NC (abt. 1900-1911); in 1911 purchased the 340-acre Mt. Vernon farm at Briery, Prince Edward Co., VA on Rt. 15 where he moved with his 1st wife & 5 children
Residence 2: Bef. 1865, His parents lived at Sophia, Randolph Co., NC where his mother's family, the Newlins, lived. In 1865 his grandfather Lazarus Pearson of Wayne Co., NC died, so they moved to his farm in Fork Township where Joseph later lived with his first wife and children
Residence 3: Bet. 1865 - 1877, After he was six years old, his parents lived in Fork Township, Wayne Co., NC on present-day Route 581 just south of where the road crosses the Little River.
Residence 4: Bet. 1881 - 1900, Lived in the home of his grandfather Lazarus Pearson (the former John W. Sasser farm) just across the road from where his mother was living on Route 581, next to the Pearson Bridge. All of his children by his first wife were said to be born there.
Residence 5: Bet. 1901 - 1911, Sometime after 1901 he and his first wife and their children moved from Wayne County to Goldsboro, the county seat of Wayne County, where they lived in the Bellevue section in a house that later burned. He may have moved there before 1901.
Residence 6: Aft. 1911, Settled at Briery, Prince Edward Co., VA after purchasing the "Mount Vernon" farm on present-day Route 15, very close to the Prince Edward-Charlotte County boundary.
Notes for Joseph Lazarus Pearson:
Comments by Bryan S. Godfrey, great-grandson of Joseph Lazarus Pearson by his second marriage to Virginia Alexander Perrow:
Joseph Lazarus Pearson, the eldest of the eight children of John "Thomas" Pearson and Dicena Newlin Pearson, was born June 2, 1859. At this time his parents were living on a farm at Sophia in Randolph County, North Carolina, near where his mother's parents, Joseph and Ruth Farlow Newlin, lived at New Market. Joseph was named for his grandfathers, Joseph Newlin and Lazarus Pearson, both of whom were respected Quakers and had served as early trustees of New Garden Boarding School at Greensboro, North Carolina, which became Guilford College in 1888. Joseph's parents met while attending this Quaker academy. Joseph and his three eldest siblings, John, William, and Emily, were birthright members of Marlboro Friends Meeting at Sophia, to which the family of their mother had belonged since her mother's people, the Farlows, settled in that area in the mid-1700's. Interestingly, at the time of his birth in 1859, all of Joseph's grandparents and four of his great-grandparents were still living. His living great-grandparents were Thomas Edgerton, III (1785-1863) and Absilla Pike Edgerton (1788-1865) of Buck Swamp Township, Wayne County, North Carolina; Nathaniel Newlin (1768-1867) of Bloomingdale, Parke County, Indiana; and Isaac Farlow (1767-1860) of Randolph County, North Carolina. Joseph probably saw his Great-Grandfather Farlow as an infant, but whether he ever saw his Edgerton great-grandparents is not known, but doubtful since his parents did not move to Wayne County until 1865. It is assumed that his Great-Grandfather Newlin never returned to North Carolina after settling in Indiana in 1826. Since Joseph lived to become a great-grandfather himself, he lived through seven generations of his family.
Joseph's paternal grandfather, Lazarus Pearson, died in March, 1865, and it was probably later that year that his parents moved to Wayne County in time for his father to become administrator of the estate. Joseph's maternal grandfather also died in August of that year. The remainder of Joseph's childhood was spent in Wayne County's Fork Township, along present-day Route 581, where the Pearson property was alongside the southern shore of Little River. In August, 1995, the John Thomas Pearson home, which was probably built by Thomas, was still standing on Route 581 next to Luke's Auto but had been condemned. It had been occupied by a black family many years, and by 1995 a new predominantly African-American neighborhood had been developed on the old Pearson estate. The only old homes there at that time were the Thomas Pearson place and the Lazarus Pearson home across the road and nearer to what was formerly known as Pearson Bridge, where Route 581 crosses the Little River. The African-American family who owned the Lazarus Pearson home at this time, Mr. and Mrs. Charlie Lofton, knew their home as the "old Joe Sasser place." It was from John W. Sasser that Lazarus Pearson bought 1000 acres on the south side of Little River in the 1850's. After moving to Wayne County, Joseph and his siblings were affiliated with Nahunta Friends Meeting, where the Pearson family had worshipped ever since Ichabod Pearson I, Joseph's great-grandfather, moved to Wayne County from Perquimans County, North Carolina in 1776. The other four children of Thomas and Dicena, James, Minnie, Mary, and Thomas Oliver, were born in Wayne County.
Joe and his brother John were attending New Garden Boarding School when their father died of typhoid fever in 1877 at the age of forty. As the eldest boys in a family of eight children, one of whom had already died in infancy, they quit school to help their mother run the farm. Their father had a cotton gin between his house and Pearson Bridge which Joseph and John operated in addition to farming the land. Like many of the Pearsons, Joe and John were mechanically gifted, and Joe eventually operated a shop on the property.
Following his marriage to Mary Elizabeth Deans, Joseph lived in his Grandfather Pearson's home across from his mother, the one known as the Joe Sasser place. According to "History of the Pearson Family of Wayne County, North Carolina 1700-1981" (1982) by Joseph's niece, Ruth Pearson Harper (1901-1985) of Roanoke, Alabama, daughter of his brother John, all of Joseph's children by Mary were born on this farm. Joseph and Mary had eight children. Luby, who was probably the eldest, died in infancy, and no dates of birth and death have been found for him. Another daughter, Rella, died at age nine in 1900, said to have been from pneumonia. Where she and Luby are buried is unknown, but it was probably the Pearson-Lewis-Gurley-Edgerton family plot north of the Little River, though no graves have been found for them. Joseph's spinster aunt, Elizabeth F. ("Lizzie") Pearson (1842-1927), lived with Joseph and Mary in her parents' home until the fall of 1887, when she moved to Ackworth, Iowa. Joseph's mother died of pneumonia in 1897 at the age of sixty, and after her death, the Pearson homestead began to break up as her children moved away. Most of the original heirs of the Lazarus Pearson estate, consisting of Joseph's father and his aunts and uncles, had either died young and unmarried or had gone West, and Joseph's father was the only surviving child of Lazarus Pearson who remained in Wayne County. The homestead had passed out of the family by 1912.
Joseph and Mary's youngest child, Edgar Paul Pearson, known as Paul or Polly, was born in 1901, so it was probably after his birth that they moved to town at Goldsboro, the seat of Wayne County, about ten miles away from Fork Township. They lived in a house called Bellevue which later burned down. It is uncertain as to what type of work Joseph did after they moved to town, but according to the 1910 census, he was a sawyer. It is likely that he did machining work and owned a shop since he was mechanically gifted and good at woodwork. He enjoyed making furniture, and while living in Goldsboro, a table he made was pictured in the Goldsboro newspape
According to Mrs. Harper in her Pearson book, Joseph grew weary of the unhealthful conditions of the swampy lowlands of Eastern North Carolina, which resulted in frequent bouts of malarial chills and typhoid fever, and began to seek land on higher ground. She mentioned that in 1910 he wrote a letter to his Uncle Oliver Newlin in which he considered purchasing land near him in Randolph, his native county, but the price was too high. He then toured the southern part of Virginia and finally found a farm which suited him in Prince Edward County, about three miles from Keysville in Charlotte County.
On February 7, 1911, Joseph and Mary moved from Goldsboro to the "Mount Vernon" farm at Briery in Prince Edward County, Virginia with their children John, Minnie, Harvey, Ross, and Paul. Their only surviving child who did not accompany them was daughter Annie Pearson Edwards (1886-1958), who was already married with children and remained in Wayne County, moving to Goldsboro in her later years. The other children were not married yet. "Mount Vernon" was a farm of about 340 acres located on the Farmville Road (present-day U.S. 15) about a quarter mile north of the intersection of State Route 654 with Route 15. This area is known as Briery and is very near the boundary between Prince Edward County and Charlotte County.
Joseph was an early owner of a Model T Ford. How he and his family made the move to Virginia in 1911 is uncertain. It was rather late by then for them to have come on horseback, and since automobiles were still very rare and owned almost exclusively by the wealthy, they probably came by train.
Either before or upon moving to Virginia, Joseph forfeited the Quaker affiliation of his ancestors and became a Methodist.
Mary was very feeble after giving birth to her youngest child. This could have been part of the reason why Joseph sought a home on higher ground. She then was stricken with tuberculosis and died December 12, 1917, six years after moving to Virginia, at the age of fifty-six. By this time daughter Minnie was married to H. Ashley Tuggle (1866-1955) and living in town at Keysville, but all of the sons were still living on the farm.
As a strong believer in self-reliance and the Protestant work ethic, Joseph is said to have worked his sons very hard on his farm, so much so that it is believed at least one of them rebelled and moved on to other lines of work. None of Joseph and Mary's children except Ross took up farming. Minnie lived at Keysville, where her husband Ashley Tuggle was a machinist who was heir to his father's fortune acquired from having invented a better type of exterior light for trains. The oldest surviving son, John, remained a bachelor and eventually left the farm in favor of employment at a hardware store in Keysville. Harvey moved to Richmond and became a watch repairman. Ross went to Norfolk, worked for the Norfolk and Western Railroad as a steam shovel operator, and returned to Briery shortly thereafter where he continued working for the railroad and also engaged in farming on the property of his wife's family. Edgar "Paul" Pearson (1901-1980), the youngest, joined the Navy and after marriage lived near Altavista in Campbell County, Virginia, where he worked for the Lane Company.
Two years after Mary died, at the age of sixty Joseph married Virginia Alexander ("Virgie") Perrow on January 15, 1920, a native of Campbell County, Virginia, who was 24 years his junior. There are two conflicting stories concerning how Joseph and Virgie met. The first, as told by his daughter Minnie, states that Joseph was attending a fair where Virgie was demonstrating a sewing machine for the Singer Sewing Machine Company, for which she worked in Norfolk. The second story, as remembered by Joseph and Virgie's daughters Ella and Virginia, states that they met somehow through Virgie's cousin, Mary Gordon Moon Parker, of Lynchburg, Virginia. Perhaps both stories are partially true, and maybe Mary Gordon was with Virgie at the fair when she met Joseph. Joseph and Virgie were married at Baltimore, Maryland, which is where Virgie's sister Ora and husband, Welford Garner, lived. Virgie and Ora were particularly close, as they had lived together and worked in Norfolk before marriage. Virgie's parents, William "Adolphus" Perrow, Sr. and Ella Walker Perrow of Campbell County, issued wedding invitations, and one of them was inherited by daughter Ella.
Joseph and Virgie had three daughters, Ella Perrow, Virginia Ford, and Ora Garner. Ella was named for Virgie's mother, Ella Walker Perrow, Virginia's middle name was for a Ford family that lived near the Pearsons, and Ora was named for Virgie's sister in Baltimore. When Ella, the oldest, was born, Joseph was almost 62 years old and Virgie was 38, and his oldest grandchild was fifteen at the time!
As a talented man of many interests, Joseph established a self-sufficient farm at Briery and was relatively prominent compared to his neighbors as shown by the fact that when the Depression came on, his mortgage was already paid off. His farm had a spring which was dammed up to form a large pond, where Joseph built a grist mill from which he produced meal and feed. He was one of the early owners of the typewriter, with which he frequently wrote letters to his family using stationery with a letterhead, "Joseph L. Pearson, Manufacturer of Meal & Feed, General Farming." This no doubt influenced two of his daughters by his second wife Virgie, Ella and Virginia, to go to business school and become secretaries.
Joseph continued his woodworking hobby in Virginia and made furniture. After marrying Virgie, he made a cedar chest for Virgie's mother, Ella Walker Perrow, who ironically was four months younger than he! He and Virgie attached a typewritten note to the inside of it as follows: "To Mother, With unmitigated love and in appreciation of her great kindness to us. Virgie and Joseph make her this little present which we hope she will accept and that it will be of service with love." It is said that Joseph grew the tree from which he got the wood to make this chest, but since he moved to Virginia in 1911 and Ella Perrow died in 1927, this is doubtful, considering how slow cedar trees grow. Virgie's youngest sister, Phanie Perrow Flynn, inherited this chest from their mother. After Phanie's death in 1995, her daughter, Marguerite Flynn Harry of McCormick, South Carolina, insisted it go back to the Pearson family and in January, 2000 graciously gave it to me, a grandson of Joseph and Virgie's daughter Ella. I now use it to store framed family portraits which I hope to hang someday when I live in a larger place.
Joseph also enjoyed reading and music. He played several musical instruments, including the banjo, and he and Virgie had a piano. An avid reader, Joseph acquired a respectable library and is especially remembered for being one of the early subscribers to "National Geographic" magazine, of which he accumulated many volumes.
Joseph farmed cotton, strawberries, grapes, and other crops. According to Ruth Pearson Harper in her book, her father, John Newlin Pearson, rooted scuppernong and muscadine grape vines and mailed them to his brother Joseph to plant on his farm. One of the longest trips of John's life was to visit Joseph, and Joseph also returned to North Carolina occasionally to visit his family.
Even though she was 32 years his junior, Joseph was especially close with his first cousin, Hessie Newlin Davis (1891-1979) of Sophia, North Carolina, daughter of Joseph's uncle Oliver Newlin (1842-1934). Hessie and her husband Jerome visited Joseph and Virgie when their five children and Joseph and Virgie's daughters were very young. Joseph frequently wrote to Hessie, and in 1996, Hessie's daughters, Mary Alice Davis Allred (1918-1997) and Emily Davis Pugh (1922-2004) of Trinity, North Carolina, began insisting on giving these and other Newlin family memorabilia to Joseph and Virgie's great-grandson, Bryan Godfrey. In a letter to Hessie dated March 29, 1919, Joseph discusses having bought a full carat, gold Tiffany diamond ring for $200 for a woman he intends to marry, without giving her name, but of course it is Virgie he is referring to. He also refers to a failed romance he had with a girl who lived near Hessie at Sophia, whom he only refers to as "O." Emily Pugh says this is Ora Loflin Farlow (1892-1978), who apparently courted Joseph after Mary's death and before she met her husband, a distant cousin of Joseph and Hessie. It is coincidental that Joseph courted a women named Ora before meeting Virgie, who had a sister and an aunt named Ora, for whom they would name their youngest daughter. In a letter to Hessie dated May 15, 1927, Joseph states that all his boys were gone from the farm and he and Virgie were busy there raising their three small girls. He was apparently replying to a note from Hessie about the deaths of their uncle, Duncan Newlin (1839-1927), his wife Lodoski, and another uncle, Franklin Farlow, within a short time. In this letter Joseph indicates he does not hear from his siblings very often, that he heard his sister Emily had remarried and moved near Hessie, and that there had been strained relations between him and some of his brothers concerning the settlement of their mother's estate.
Because he lived away from his family, Joseph's daughters by Virgie did not know their father's kinfolk in North Carolina. Most of his siblings died either before or shortly after they were born. However, Joseph and his family received occasional visits from his relatives, including his brother John, John's children Earl, Ruth, Sallie, and Mary, his brother Jimmy in Goldsboro, and his youngest brother Oliver and wife Clyde in Memphis, Tennessee. Joseph's daughters Ella and Virginia also recall a visit from some drably dressed Quaker relations whom Virginia remembers were Newlins. But it was mainly Virgie's family in the Lynchburg, Virginia area who visited the Pearsons often, as they would take the train to Briery and get off where the tracks ran behind the "Mount Vernon" property.
Two of Joseph's nieces, Margaret Pearson Hicks (1910-2004) of Cary, North Carolina, daughter of his brother William, and Esther Edgerton Allen (1911-2004) of Rocky Mount, North Carolina, and Virginia Beach, Virginia, daughter of Joseph's sister Mary, said they never met their Uncle Joseph. Mary Pearson Edgerton died in childbirth at age 41 in 1915, and her husband Haskell remarried shortly thereafter.
Joseph continued working on his farm and had a sharp mind until the end. He suffered a heart attack and died three weeks later at home on June 27, 1944 at the age of eighty-five. Virgie wrote a letter to Hessie on June 25, 1944 stating that the doctors were giving them very little hope since Joseph's heart attack. Since Joseph died two days later, he was probably already dead by the time Hessie received it. Jim Jones of Gladys, Virginia, the husband of Virgie's sister Ilene, was a wheelwright and furnished the casket in which Joseph was buried. He was buried beside his first wife Mary and their son John, who died nine years before Joseph, at Ash Camp Baptist Church on Route 40 at Keysville.
Fortunately, Joseph lived long enough to see his three daughters by Virgie get married. Ella and her husband, Ray Overstreet, were living in Newport News, Virginia and working in the Newport News Shipbuilding. Ora and her new husband, Wilbur Dowdy, were also living temporarily in Newport News, as he was in the U.S. Navy and she was working for the telephone company. Virginia, the middle daughter, who at her father's insistence was known as Ford growing up but became known as Virginia after his death, was living at the Pearson farm when Joseph died with her infant daughter Carolyn. Her husband, Ed Wheeler, was also in the Navy.
Shortly after his death, Virgie sold Joseph's farm and most of his belongings that the heirs did not want. His grandson, Hugh Pearson Tuggle (1919-2001), bought his Model T Ford from the estate and drove it for several years before it wound up on a car lot at Chase City, Virginia. Many of Joseph's antiques, including his clocks, were acquired by his son Ross, whose sons became avid antique collectors and still preserve them in their homes at Briery. Virgie moved with her daughter Virginia to Lynchburg and outlived Joseph by eleven years.
Interest in clocks and watches has run in the Pearson family. Joseph's youngest brother, Oliver, became a jewelry, watch, and clock repairman and merchant at Memphis, Tennessee. Joseph's son Harvey followed this vocation in the backyard shop of his home at 4211 Stonewall Avenue in the Forest Hills subdivision of Richmond. In the third generation, Joseph's grandson, H.P. Tuggle, continued this trade in his backyard shop behind his late parents' Victorian home on Route 360 at Keysville.
The "Mount Vernon" estate passed through several owners before it was restored by the Dunn family in the early 1990's, who sold it shortly thereafter. By erecting bricks and columns around the outside while leaving the inside intact, the Dunns made it a mansion, a lot more pretentious than it looked when the Pearsons owned it. The original home was said to have been built by slaves before the Civil War, and it had a graveyard behind it, but no tombstones remain. The property was for sale again in 1998 for about $700,000. When the movie "Sommersby" was being filmed near there at Charlotte Court House in the early 1990's, the lead actor, Richard Gere, stayed in the home. Ross Pearson's sons, who lived very near the homeplace, and were excellent cooks and hosts, graciously hosted several family get-togethers at which they took family members to see their grandfather's home since its restoration.
Since he abandoned Quakerism, most of Joseph's descendants are probably unacquainted with the Quaker, or Friends, faith, yet it is a unique tradition for which they should be very proud. It is mainly because Quaker meetings recorded births, deaths, marriages, and other events in the lives of their members, that Joseph's family is well-traced on most sides, even back to the 1600's and earlier in England and Ireland. Beginning in the 1930's, William Wade Hinshaw compiled these records of Quaker meetings, which in 1950 he published as several volumes entitled "Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy." Joseph's family and distant cousins were also fortunate because their family histories were preserved in numerous books and articles written on their ancestral families, nearly all of which can be found in the North Carolina Friends Historical Collection in the Guilford College Library at Greensboro. Founded in the 1650's by George Fox and others who acquired followers among the farmers and artisans of northern England, where the Pearsons originated, the Society of Friends became known as Quakers originally out of derision due to their unusual worship practices. Since their faith opposed the rigid formalities and perceived superficialities of the Church of England, or Established Church, Quakers were persecuted in England and Ireland in the late 1600's and early 1700's. This is the main reason for why Joseph's ancestors settled in America, mainly in Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. Several of the ones who came to Pennsylvania were friends of William Penn, who successfully established a Quaker Utopia in his colony which became a model for the new government of the United States in 1787.
Quakers were unprecedented in advocating humanitarian ideals which stood far ahead of their time, including peace, equality, liberty, tolerance, temperance, simplicity, and humility. They extended personal liberty and equality to encompass all persons, including women and non-whites, and because of this, Quakers were early leaders in promoting antislavery and campaigning for humane treatment and equality of the sexes, races, and social classes. With several exceptions, most of Joseph's family opposed slavery and went to Indiana and other non-slave areas of the Midwest during the early 1800's, and the ones who remained in North Carolina aroused jealousy and antipathy from their slaveholding neighbors because they were able to acquire wealth without slaves. The stereotypes most people have of Quakers as being drab and plain-clothed is mainly due to early Quaker perceptions that pride is sinful and that is is best to practice moderation while avoiding pretentiousness. Furthermore, Quakers were noted for promoting higher education and literacy for all, including women, in a day when it was rare, especially among agrarian families in the South. As a result, Joseph Pearson's family and distant relations were well-connected with Guilford College, and numerous family members have achieved distinction in scholarly pursuits far out of proportion to the average family. The distinctive academic successes of Quakers has been attributed to a theory that their superior thinking abilities stemmed from the Quaker belief that one's thought processes and prayer should be guided by meditation and the Inner Light.
Joseph shared common American ancestors with both Quaker Presidents of the United States, Herbert Hoover and Richard Nixon. According to his grandson Dan Pearson, Joseph claimed to be related to Hoover, but it is not known what basis he had to make that claim since the connection was remote and he had no way of knowing his actual connections to Hoover through both the Elliott family of North Carolina and the French family of New Jersey on his father's side. Perhaps it was because Hoover was descended from a Pierson family of Pennsylvania, but there is no known kinship to Joseph's Quaker Pearsons of North Carolina. He was also distantly related to the second Quaker President, Richard Milhous Nixon, several ways by both blood and marriage, the blood connections being through both the Mendenhall and Maris families of Pennsylvania.
The following is my great-grandfather's obituary in the "Richmond Times-Dispatch," June 29, 1944:
Pearson Rites Set for Today At Farmville [incorrect--near Keysville]
FARMVILLE--Joseph L. Pearson, 85, died at his home near Keysville, June 27. He was a son of Thomas and Dicena Pearson, of Guilford [incorrect--Wayne County], N.C. He is survived by his wife, Mrs. Virginia Perrow Pearson, three sons, J.H., of Richmond; O.L. of Keysville; and E.P. Pearson, of Altavista; five daughters, Mrs. H.A. [Minnie] Tuggle and Mrs. E.L. [Virginia] Wheeler, of Keysville; Mrs. L.D. [Annie] Edwards, of Goldsboro, N.C.; Mrs. M.R. [Ella] Overstreet and Mrs. W.C. [Ora] Dowdy, of Newport News; two brothers [James R. Pearson of Goldsboro, NC and T. Oliver Pearson of Memphis, TN] and a sister [Emily Pearson Smith Bulla of Wilmington, NC].
The funeral will be held at 2 P.M. Thursday, at the home. Interment will be in the family cemetery [incorrect--Ash Camp Baptist Church, Keysville]. The Rev. Mr. Boyd will have charge of the services.
The following longer obituary was located and emailed to me in 2013 by a fellow findagrave.com contributor:
The Charlotte Gazette
Drakes Branch VA
Thursday
July 13, 1944
Joseph Lazarus Pearson Buried at Ash Camp
Funeral services for Joseph Lazarus Pearson, aged 85, were held at Ash Camp Cemetery, Keysville, June 29, Rev. G.H. Boyd of the Methodist Church conducting the services.
The deceased was a resident of Goldsboro, N.C., until 1910, when the family moved to the present home near Keysville. He was twice married, his first wife being Miss Mary Elizabeth Deane of Goldsboro, who preceded him to the grave in 1917. Five children survive this union, as follows: Mrs. Luby Edwards of Greensboro; J.H. Pearson, of Richmond; Mrs. H.A. Tuggle and O.R. Pearson, Keysville, and E.P. Pearson, of Altavista. Several years later he married Miss Virginia Perrow of Concord, Va. Three daughters survive this union, who are Mrs. Roy Overstreet and Mrs. Wilbur Dowdy of Newport News, and Mrs. E.L. L. Wheeler of Keysville. Also one sisters, Mrs. Dan Bulla, of Wilmington, N.C., and two brothers, J.R. Pearson, of Goldsboro, N.C., and T.O. Pearson, of Memphis, Tenn., with seventeen grand children and five great grand children.
The fllwing were pallbearers; Thomas Hogan, Raleigh younger, P.B. Thompson, E.M. Arvin, H.D. Peters, H.L. Wheeler and Floyd Garrett.
The honorary pallbearers were Lewis V. Pettus, L.J. Yeaman, Hogan Waddell, G.E. Garrett, L.P. Sheppard, Hubert Clark and Dick Epperson.
Flower bearers: Raymond Pearson, Reginald Pearson, Dan Pearson, Kathryn Pearson, Mary Tuggle, Helen Sue Tuggle, Billy Tuggle, Thomas Younger, Ruth Morgan, Robert Perrow, Mrs. Mason, Ruby Dowdy and Olaf Waddell.
More About Joseph Lazarus Pearson:
Burial: Unknown, Ash Camp Baptist Church, Rt. 40, Keysville, VA
Cause of Death: Myocarditis; heart attack; suffered a heart attack three weeks before he died
Census: 1910, Living at Goldsboro, Wayne Co., NC. Occupation--sawyer.
College: 1877, Attended New Garden Boarding School (now Guilford College) at Greensboro, NC; had to quit school at age 18 following his father's death from typhoid fever
Ethnicity/Relig.: Raised as a Quaker in Marlboro and Nahunta Friends Meetings in North Carolina; abandoned the Quaker tradition of his ancestors and became Methodist after moving to Virginia in 1911 (but may have become Methodist before moving to Virginia)
Event: He and his immediate family had good mechanical ability and inventiveness. On 26 Apr 1897, while living at "Goldsborough, " he filed a patent to the U.S. Patent Office for a pipe wrench; patented 15 Jun 1897, No. 27211. It used a single piece of steel.
Medical Information: Is said to have cut 3 sets of teeth
Occupation: Farmer and cotton gin operator in North Carolina on the Pearson family homestead; apparently had a mechanic's shop while living at Goldsboro, NC, ca. 1897; farmer & meal/feed manufacturer in Virginia.
Personality/Intrst: Collected "National Geographic" magazines; enjoyed music and woodworking; made many pieces of furniture and cedar chests; was one of the early owners of a typewriter and a Model T Ford
Residence 1: Rt. 581, Fork Township, Wayne Co., NC (1865-abt 1900); Bellevue, Goldsboro, NC (abt. 1900-1911); in 1911 purchased the 340-acre Mt. Vernon farm at Briery, Prince Edward Co., VA on Rt. 15 where he moved with his 1st wife & 5 children
Residence 2: Bef. 1865, His parents lived at Sophia, Randolph Co., NC where his mother's family, the Newlins, lived. In 1865 his grandfather Lazarus Pearson of Wayne Co., NC died, so they moved to his farm in Fork Township where Joseph later lived with his first wife and children
Residence 3: Bet. 1865 - 1877, After he was six years old, his parents lived in Fork Township, Wayne Co., NC on present-day Route 581 just south of where the road crosses the Little River.
Residence 4: Bet. 1881 - 1900, Lived in the home of his grandfather Lazarus Pearson (the former John W. Sasser farm) just across the road from where his mother was living on Route 581, next to the Pearson Bridge. All of his children by his first wife were said to be born there.
Residence 5: Bet. 1901 - 1911, Sometime after 1901 he and his first wife and their children moved from Wayne County to Goldsboro, the county seat of Wayne County, where they lived in the Bellevue section in a house that later burned. He may have moved there before 1901.
Residence 6: Aft. 1911, Settled at Briery, Prince Edward Co., VA after purchasing the "Mount Vernon" farm on present-day Route 15, very close to the Prince Edward-Charlotte County boundary.
Joseph Lazarus10 Pearson (John "Thomas"9, Lazarus8, Ichabod7, Ichabod6, Jonathan5, Peter4, Christopher3, William2 Pearson?, John1 Pearson) was born 02 Jun 1859 in Sophia, Randolph Co., NC, and died 27 Jun 1944 in "Mount Vernon," now known as "Cloney House," on present-day U.S. Highway 15, Briery, Prince Edward Co., VA. He married (1) Mary Elizabeth Deans 10 Jan 1881 in Wayne Co., NC, daughter of Thomas Anderson Deans and Edith Howell. She was born 18 Jan 1861 in Fork Township, Wayne Co., NC and died 12 Dec 1917 in "Mount Vernon, " Briery, Prince Edward Co., VA. He married (2) Virginia Alexander Perrow 15 Jan 1920 in Baltimore, Baltimore Co., MD, daughter of William Adolphus Perrow and Ella Tunstall Walker. She was born 24 Apr 1883 in Gladys, Campbell Co., VA, and died 30 Oct 1955 in 4610 Fairmont Street, Lynchburg, VA.
Notes for Joseph Lazarus Pearson:
Comments by Bryan S. Godfrey, great-grandson of Joseph Lazarus Pearson by his second marriage to Virginia Alexander Perrow:
Joseph Lazarus Pearson, the eldest of the eight children of John "Thomas" Pearson and Dicena Newlin Pearson, was born June 2, 1859. At this time his parents were living on a farm at Sophia in Randolph County, North Carolina, near where his mother's parents, Joseph and Ruth Farlow Newlin, lived at New Market. Joseph was named for his grandfathers, Joseph Newlin and Lazarus Pearson, both of whom were respected Quakers and had served as early trustees of New Garden Boarding School at Greensboro, North Carolina, which became Guilford College in 1888. Joseph's parents met while attending this Quaker academy. Joseph and his three eldest siblings, John, William, and Emily, were birthright members of Marlboro Friends Meeting at Sophia, to which the family of their mother had belonged since her mother's people, the Farlows, settled in that area in the mid-1700's. Interestingly, at the time of his birth in 1859, all of Joseph's grandparents and four of his great-grandparents were still living. His living great-grandparents were Thomas Edgerton, III (1785-1863) and Absilla Pike Edgerton (1788-1865) of Buck Swamp Township, Wayne County, North Carolina; Nathaniel Newlin (1768-1867) of Bloomingdale, Parke County, Indiana; and Isaac Farlow (1767-1860) of Randolph County, North Carolina. Joseph probably saw his Great-Grandfather Farlow as an infant, but whether he ever saw his Edgerton great-grandparents is not known, but doubtful since his parents did not move to Wayne County until 1865. It is assumed that his Great-Grandfather Newlin never returned to North Carolina after settling in Indiana in 1826. Since Joseph lived to become a great-grandfather himself, he lived through seven generations of his family.
Joseph's paternal grandfather, Lazarus Pearson, died in March, 1865, and it was probably later that year that his parents moved to Wayne County in time for his father to become administrator of the estate. Joseph's maternal grandfather also died in August of that year. The remainder of Joseph's childhood was spent in Wayne County's Fork Township, along present-day Route 581, where the Pearson property was alongside the southern shore of Little River. In August, 1995, the John Thomas Pearson home, which was probably built by Thomas, was still standing on Route 581 next to Luke's Auto but had been condemned. It had been occupied by a black family many years, and by 1995 a new predominantly African-American neighborhood had been developed on the old Pearson estate. The only old homes there at that time were the Thomas Pearson place and the Lazarus Pearson home across the road and nearer to what was formerly known as Pearson Bridge, where Route 581 crosses the Little River. The African-American family who owned the Lazarus Pearson home at this time, Mr. and Mrs. Charlie Lofton, knew their home as the "old Joe Sasser place." It was from John W. Sasser that Lazarus Pearson bought 1000 acres on the south side of Little River in the 1850's. After moving to Wayne County, Joseph and his siblings were affiliated with Nahunta Friends Meeting, where the Pearson family had worshipped ever since Ichabod Pearson I, Joseph's great-grandfather, moved to Wayne County from Perquimans County, North Carolina in 1776. The other four children of Thomas and Dicena, James, Minnie, Mary, and Thomas Oliver, were born in Wayne County.
Joe and his brother John were attending New Garden Boarding School when their father died of typhoid fever in 1877 at the age of forty. As the eldest boys in a family of eight children, one of whom had already died in infancy, they quit school to help their mother run the farm. Their father had a cotton gin between his house and Pearson Bridge which Joseph and John operated in addition to farming the land. Like many of the Pearsons, Joe and John were mechanically gifted, and Joe eventually operated a shop on the property.
Following his marriage to Mary Elizabeth Deans, Joseph lived in his Grandfather Pearson's home across from his mother, the one known as the Joe Sasser place. According to "History of the Pearson Family of Wayne County, North Carolina 1700-1981" (1982) by Joseph's niece, Ruth Pearson Harper (1901-1985) of Roanoke, Alabama, daughter of his brother John, all of Joseph's children by Mary were born on this farm. Joseph and Mary had eight children. Luby, who was probably the eldest, died in infancy, and no dates of birth and death have been found for him. Another daughter, Rella, died at age nine in 1900, said to have been from pneumonia. Where she and Luby are buried is unknown, but it was probably the Pearson-Lewis-Gurley-Edgerton family plot north of the Little River, though no graves have been found for them. Joseph's spinster aunt, Elizabeth F. ("Lizzie") Pearson (1842-1927), lived with Joseph and Mary in her parents' home until the fall of 1887, when she moved to Ackworth, Iowa. Joseph's mother died of pneumonia in 1897 at the age of sixty, and after her death, the Pearson homestead began to break up as her children moved away. Most of the original heirs of the Lazarus Pearson estate, consisting of Joseph's father and his aunts and uncles, had either died young and unmarried or had gone West, and Joseph's father was the only surviving child of Lazarus Pearson who remained in Wayne County. The homestead had passed out of the family by 1912.
Joseph and Mary's youngest child, Edgar Paul Pearson, known as Paul or Polly, was born in 1901, so it was probably after his birth that they moved to town at Goldsboro, the seat of Wayne County, about ten miles away from Fork Township. They lived in a house called Bellevue which later burned down. It is uncertain as to what type of work Joseph did after they moved to town, but according to the 1910 census, he was a sawyer. It is likely that he did machining work and owned a shop since he was mechanically gifted and good at woodwork. He enjoyed making furniture, and while living in Goldsboro, a table he made was pictured in the Goldsboro newspape
According to Mrs. Harper in her Pearson book, Joseph grew weary of the unhealthful conditions of the swampy lowlands of Eastern North Carolina, which resulted in frequent bouts of malarial chills and typhoid fever, and began to seek land on higher ground. She mentioned that in 1910 he wrote a letter to his Uncle Oliver Newlin in which he considered purchasing land near him in Randolph, his native county, but the price was too high. He then toured the southern part of Virginia and finally found a farm which suited him in Prince Edward County, about three miles from Keysville in Charlotte County.
On February 7, 1911, Joseph and Mary moved from Goldsboro to the "Mount Vernon" farm at Briery in Prince Edward County, Virginia with their children John, Minnie, Harvey, Ross, and Paul. Their only surviving child who did not accompany them was daughter Annie Pearson Edwards (1886-1958), who was already married with children and remained in Wayne County, moving to Goldsboro in her later years. The other children were not married yet. "Mount Vernon" was a farm of about 340 acres located on the Farmville Road (present-day U.S. 15) about a quarter mile north of the intersection of State Route 654 with Route 15. This area is known as Briery and is very near the boundary between Prince Edward County and Charlotte County.
Joseph was an early owner of a Model T Ford. How he and his family made the move to Virginia in 1911 is uncertain. It was rather late by then for them to have come on horseback, and since automobiles were still very rare and owned almost exclusively by the wealthy, they probably came by train.
Either before or upon moving to Virginia, Joseph forfeited the Quaker affiliation of his ancestors and became a Methodist.
Mary was very feeble after giving birth to her youngest child. This could have been part of the reason why Joseph sought a home on higher ground. She then was stricken with tuberculosis and died December 12, 1917, six years after moving to Virginia, at the age of fifty-six. By this time daughter Minnie was married to H. Ashley Tuggle (1866-1955) and living in town at Keysville, but all of the sons were still living on the farm.
As a strong believer in self-reliance and the Protestant work ethic, Joseph is said to have worked his sons very hard on his farm, so much so that it is believed at least one of them rebelled and moved on to other lines of work. None of Joseph and Mary's children except Ross took up farming. Minnie lived at Keysville, where her husband Ashley Tuggle was a machinist who was heir to his father's fortune acquired from having invented a better type of exterior light for trains. The oldest surviving son, John, remained a bachelor and eventually left the farm in favor of employment at a hardware store in Keysville. Harvey moved to Richmond and became a watch repairman. Ross went to Norfolk, worked for the Norfolk and Western Railroad as a steam shovel operator, and returned to Briery shortly thereafter where he continued working for the railroad and also engaged in farming on the property of his wife's family. Edgar "Paul" Pearson (1901-1980), the youngest, joined the Navy and after marriage lived near Altavista in Campbell County, Virginia, where he worked for the Lane Company.
Two years after Mary died, at the age of sixty Joseph married Virginia Alexander ("Virgie") Perrow on January 15, 1920, a native of Campbell County, Virginia, who was 24 years his junior. There are two conflicting stories concerning how Joseph and Virgie met. The first, as told by his daughter Minnie, states that Joseph was attending a fair where Virgie was demonstrating a sewing machine for the Singer Sewing Machine Company, for which she worked in Norfolk. The second story, as remembered by Joseph and Virgie's daughters Ella and Virginia, states that they met somehow through Virgie's cousin, Mary Gordon Moon Parker, of Lynchburg, Virginia. Perhaps both stories are partially true, and maybe Mary Gordon was with Virgie at the fair when she met Joseph. Joseph and Virgie were married at Baltimore, Maryland, which is where Virgie's sister Ora and husband, Welford Garner, lived. Virgie and Ora were particularly close, as they had lived together and worked in Norfolk before marriage. Virgie's parents, William "Adolphus" Perrow, Sr. and Ella Walker Perrow of Campbell County, issued wedding invitations, and one of them was inherited by daughter Ella.
Joseph and Virgie had three daughters, Ella Perrow, Virginia Ford, and Ora Garner. Ella was named for Virgie's mother, Ella Walker Perrow, Virginia's middle name was for a Ford family that lived near the Pearsons, and Ora was named for Virgie's sister in Baltimore. When Ella, the oldest, was born, Joseph was almost 62 years old and Virgie was 38, and his oldest grandchild was fifteen at the time!
As a talented man of many interests, Joseph established a self-sufficient farm at Briery and was relatively prominent compared to his neighbors as shown by the fact that when the Depression came on, his mortgage was already paid off. His farm had a spring which was dammed up to form a large pond, where Joseph built a grist mill from which he produced meal and feed. He was one of the early owners of the typewriter, with which he frequently wrote letters to his family using stationery with a letterhead, "Joseph L. Pearson, Manufacturer of Meal & Feed, General Farming." This no doubt influenced two of his daughters by his second wife Virgie, Ella and Virginia, to go to business school and become secretaries.
Joseph continued his woodworking hobby in Virginia and made furniture. After marrying Virgie, he made a cedar chest for Virgie's mother, Ella Walker Perrow, who ironically was four months younger than he! He and Virgie attached a typewritten note to the inside of it as follows: "To Mother, With unmitigated love and in appreciation of her great kindness to us. Virgie and Joseph make her this little present which we hope she will accept and that it will be of service with love." It is said that Joseph grew the tree from which he got the wood to make this chest, but since he moved to Virginia in 1911 and Ella Perrow died in 1927, this is doubtful, considering how slow cedar trees grow. Virgie's youngest sister, Phanie Perrow Flynn, inherited this chest from their mother. After Phanie's death in 1995, her daughter, Marguerite Flynn Harry of McCormick, South Carolina, insisted it go back to the Pearson family and in January, 2000 graciously gave it to me, a grandson of Joseph and Virgie's daughter Ella. I now use it to store framed family portraits which I hope to hang someday when I live in a larger place.
Joseph also enjoyed reading and music. He played several musical instruments, including the banjo, and he and Virgie had a piano. An avid reader, Joseph acquired a respectable library and is especially remembered for being one of the early subscribers to "National Geographic" magazine, of which he accumulated many volumes.
Joseph farmed cotton, strawberries, grapes, and other crops. According to Ruth Pearson Harper in her book, her father, John Newlin Pearson, rooted scuppernong and muscadine grape vines and mailed them to his brother Joseph to plant on his farm. One of the longest trips of John's life was to visit Joseph, and Joseph also returned to North Carolina occasionally to visit his family.
Even though she was 32 years his junior, Joseph was especially close with his first cousin, Hessie Newlin Davis (1891-1979) of Sophia, North Carolina, daughter of Joseph's uncle Oliver Newlin (1842-1934). Hessie and her husband Jerome visited Joseph and Virgie when their five children and Joseph and Virgie's daughters were very young. Joseph frequently wrote to Hessie, and in 1996, Hessie's daughters, Mary Alice Davis Allred (1918-1997) and Emily Davis Pugh (1922-2004) of Trinity, North Carolina, began insisting on giving these and other Newlin family memorabilia to Joseph and Virgie's great-grandson, Bryan Godfrey. In a letter to Hessie dated March 29, 1919, Joseph discusses having bought a full carat, gold Tiffany diamond ring for $200 for a woman he intends to marry, without giving her name, but of course it is Virgie he is referring to. He also refers to a failed romance he had with a girl who lived near Hessie at Sophia, whom he only refers to as "O." Emily Pugh says this is Ora Loflin Farlow (1892-1978), who apparently courted Joseph after Mary's death and before she met her husband, a distant cousin of Joseph and Hessie. It is coincidental that Joseph courted a women named Ora before meeting Virgie, who had a sister and an aunt named Ora, for whom they would name their youngest daughter. In a letter to Hessie dated May 15, 1927, Joseph states that all his boys were gone from the farm and he and Virgie were busy there raising their three small girls. He was apparently replying to a note from Hessie about the deaths of their uncle, Duncan Newlin (1839-1927), his wife Lodoski, and another uncle, Franklin Farlow, within a short time. In this letter Joseph indicates he does not hear from his siblings very often, that he heard his sister Emily had remarried and moved near Hessie, and that there had been strained relations between him and some of his brothers concerning the settlement of their mother's estate.
Because he lived away from his family, Joseph's daughters by Virgie did not know their father's kinfolk in North Carolina. Most of his siblings died either before or shortly after they were born. However, Joseph and his family received occasional visits from his relatives, including his brother John, John's children Earl, Ruth, Sallie, and Mary, his brother Jimmy in Goldsboro, and his youngest brother Oliver and wife Clyde in Memphis, Tennessee. Joseph's daughters Ella and Virginia also recall a visit from some drably dressed Quaker relations whom Virginia remembers were Newlins. But it was mainly Virgie's family in the Lynchburg, Virginia area who visited the Pearsons often, as they would take the train to Briery and get off where the tracks ran behind the "Mount Vernon" property.
Two of Joseph's nieces, Margaret Pearson Hicks (1910-2004) of Cary, North Carolina, daughter of his brother William, and Esther Edgerton Allen (1911-2004) of Rocky Mount, North Carolina, and Virginia Beach, Virginia, daughter of Joseph's sister Mary, said they never met their Uncle Joseph. Mary Pearson Edgerton died in childbirth at age 41 in 1915, and her husband Haskell remarried shortly thereafter.
Joseph continued working on his farm and had a sharp mind until the end. He suffered a heart attack and died three weeks later at home on June 27, 1944 at the age of eighty-five. Virgie wrote a letter to Hessie on June 25, 1944 stating that the doctors were giving them very little hope since Joseph's heart attack. Since Joseph died two days later, he was probably already dead by the time Hessie received it. Jim Jones of Gladys, Virginia, the husband of Virgie's sister Ilene, was a wheelwright and furnished the casket in which Joseph was buried. He was buried beside his first wife Mary and their son John, who died nine years before Joseph, at Ash Camp Baptist Church on Route 40 at Keysville.
Fortunately, Joseph lived long enough to see his three daughters by Virgie get married. Ella and her husband, Ray Overstreet, were living in Newport News, Virginia and working in the Newport News Shipbuilding. Ora and her new husband, Wilbur Dowdy, were also living temporarily in Newport News, as he was in the U.S. Navy and she was working for the telephone company. Virginia, the middle daughter, who at her father's insistence was known as Ford growing up but became known as Virginia after his death, was living at the Pearson farm when Joseph died with her infant daughter Carolyn. Her husband, Ed Wheeler, was also in the Navy.
Shortly after his death, Virgie sold Joseph's farm and most of his belongings that the heirs did not want. His grandson, Hugh Pearson Tuggle (1919-2001), bought his Model T Ford from the estate and drove it for several years before it wound up on a car lot at Chase City, Virginia. Many of Joseph's antiques, including his clocks, were acquired by his son Ross, whose sons became avid antique collectors and still preserve them in their homes at Briery. Virgie moved with her daughter Virginia to Lynchburg and outlived Joseph by eleven years.
Interest in clocks and watches has run in the Pearson family. Joseph's youngest brother, Oliver, became a jewelry, watch, and clock repairman and merchant at Memphis, Tennessee. Joseph's son Harvey followed this vocation in the backyard shop of his home at 4211 Stonewall Avenue in the Forest Hills subdivision of Richmond. In the third generation, Joseph's grandson, H.P. Tuggle, continued this trade in his backyard shop behind his late parents' Victorian home on Route 360 at Keysville.
The "Mount Vernon" estate passed through several owners before it was restored by the Dunn family in the early 1990's, who sold it shortly thereafter. By erecting bricks and columns around the outside while leaving the inside intact, the Dunns made it a mansion, a lot more pretentious than it looked when the Pearsons owned it. The original home was said to have been built by slaves before the Civil War, and it had a graveyard behind it, but no tombstones remain. The property was for sale again in 1998 for about $700,000. When the movie "Sommersby" was being filmed near there at Charlotte Court House in the early 1990's, the lead actor, Richard Gere, stayed in the home. Ross Pearson's sons, who lived very near the homeplace, and were excellent cooks and hosts, graciously hosted several family get-togethers at which they took family members to see their grandfather's home since its restoration.
Since he abandoned Quakerism, most of Joseph's descendants are probably unacquainted with the Quaker, or Friends, faith, yet it is a unique tradition for which they should be very proud. It is mainly because Quaker meetings recorded births, deaths, marriages, and other events in the lives of their members, that Joseph's family is well-traced on most sides, even back to the 1600's and earlier in England and Ireland. Beginning in the 1930's, William Wade Hinshaw compiled these records of Quaker meetings, which in 1950 he published as several volumes entitled "Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy." Joseph's family and distant cousins were also fortunate because their family histories were preserved in numerous books and articles written on their ancestral families, nearly all of which can be found in the North Carolina Friends Historical Collection in the Guilford College Library at Greensboro. Founded in the 1650's by George Fox and others who acquired followers among the farmers and artisans of northern England, where the Pearsons originated, the Society of Friends became known as Quakers originally out of derision due to their unusual worship practices. Since their faith opposed the rigid formalities and perceived superficialities of the Church of England, or Established Church, Quakers were persecuted in England and Ireland in the late 1600's and early 1700's. This is the main reason for why Joseph's ancestors settled in America, mainly in Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. Several of the ones who came to Pennsylvania were friends of William Penn, who successfully established a Quaker Utopia in his colony which became a model for the new government of the United States in 1787.
Quakers were unprecedented in advocating humanitarian ideals which stood far ahead of their time, including peace, equality, liberty, tolerance, temperance, simplicity, and humility. They extended personal liberty and equality to encompass all persons, including women and non-whites, and because of this, Quakers were early leaders in promoting antislavery and campaigning for humane treatment and equality of the sexes, races, and social classes. With several exceptions, most of Joseph's family opposed slavery and went to Indiana and other non-slave areas of the Midwest during the early 1800's, and the ones who remained in North Carolina aroused jealousy and antipathy from their slaveholding neighbors because they were able to acquire wealth without slaves. The stereotypes most people have of Quakers as being drab and plain-clothed is mainly due to early Quaker perceptions that pride is sinful and that is is best to practice moderation while avoiding pretentiousness. Furthermore, Quakers were noted for promoting higher education and literacy for all, including women, in a day when it was rare, especially among agrarian families in the South. As a result, Joseph Pearson's family and distant relations were well-connected with Guilford College, and numerous family members have achieved distinction in scholarly pursuits far out of proportion to the average family. The distinctive academic successes of Quakers has been attributed to a theory that their superior thinking abilities stemmed from the Quaker belief that one's thought processes and prayer should be guided by meditation and the Inner Light.
Joseph shared common American ancestors with both Quaker Presidents of the United States, Herbert Hoover and Richard Nixon. According to his grandson Dan Pearson, Joseph claimed to be related to Hoover, but it is not known what basis he had to make that claim since the connection was remote and he had no way of knowing his actual connections to Hoover through both the Elliott family of North Carolina and the French family of New Jersey on his father's side. Perhaps it was because Hoover was descended from a Pierson family of Pennsylvania, but there is no known kinship to Joseph's Quaker Pearsons of North Carolina. He was also distantly related to the second Quaker President, Richard Milhous Nixon, several ways by both blood and marriage, the blood connections being through both the Mendenhall and Maris families of Pennsylvania.
The following is my great-grandfather's obituary in the "Richmond Times-Dispatch," June 29, 1944:
Pearson Rites Set for Today At Farmville [incorrect--near Keysville]
FARMVILLE--Joseph L. Pearson, 85, died at his home near Keysville, June 27. He was a son of Thomas and Dicena Pearson, of Guilford [incorrect--Wayne County], N.C. He is survived by his wife, Mrs. Virginia Perrow Pearson, three sons, J.H., of Richmond; O.L. of Keysville; and E.P. Pearson, of Altavista; five daughters, Mrs. H.A. [Minnie] Tuggle and Mrs. E.L. [Virginia] Wheeler, of Keysville; Mrs. L.D. [Annie] Edwards, of Goldsboro, N.C.; Mrs. M.R. [Ella] Overstreet and Mrs. W.C. [Ora] Dowdy, of Newport News; two brothers [James R. Pearson of Goldsboro, NC and T. Oliver Pearson of Memphis, TN] and a sister [Emily Pearson Smith Bulla of Wilmington, NC].
The funeral will be held at 2 P.M. Thursday, at the home. Interment will be in the family cemetery [incorrect--Ash Camp Baptist Church, Keysville]. The Rev. Mr. Boyd will have charge of the services.
The following longer obituary was located and emailed to me in 2013 by a fellow findagrave.com contributor:
The Charlotte Gazette
Drakes Branch VA
Thursday
July 13, 1944
Joseph Lazarus Pearson Buried at Ash Camp
Funeral services for Joseph Lazarus Pearson, aged 85, were held at Ash Camp Cemetery, Keysville, June 29, Rev. G.H. Boyd of the Methodist Church conducting the services.
The deceased was a resident of Goldsboro, N.C., until 1910, when the family moved to the present home near Keysville. He was twice married, his first wife being Miss Mary Elizabeth Deane of Goldsboro, who preceded him to the grave in 1917. Five children survive this union, as follows: Mrs. Luby Edwards of Greensboro; J.H. Pearson, of Richmond; Mrs. H.A. Tuggle and O.R. Pearson, Keysville, and E.P. Pearson, of Altavista. Several years later he married Miss Virginia Perrow of Concord, Va. Three daughters survive this union, who are Mrs. Roy Overstreet and Mrs. Wilbur Dowdy of Newport News, and Mrs. E.L. L. Wheeler of Keysville. Also one sisters, Mrs. Dan Bulla, of Wilmington, N.C., and two brothers, J.R. Pearson, of Goldsboro, N.C., and T.O. Pearson, of Memphis, Tenn., with seventeen grand children and five great grand children.
The fllwing were pallbearers; Thomas Hogan, Raleigh younger, P.B. Thompson, E.M. Arvin, H.D. Peters, H.L. Wheeler and Floyd Garrett.
The honorary pallbearers were Lewis V. Pettus, L.J. Yeaman, Hogan Waddell, G.E. Garrett, L.P. Sheppard, Hubert Clark and Dick Epperson.
Flower bearers: Raymond Pearson, Reginald Pearson, Dan Pearson, Kathryn Pearson, Mary Tuggle, Helen Sue Tuggle, Billy Tuggle, Thomas Younger, Ruth Morgan, Robert Perrow, Mrs. Mason, Ruby Dowdy and Olaf Waddell.
More About Joseph Lazarus Pearson:
Burial: Unknown, Ash Camp Baptist Church, Rt. 40, Keysville, VA
Cause of Death: Myocarditis; heart attack; suffered a heart attack three weeks before he died
Census: 1910, Living at Goldsboro, Wayne Co., NC. Occupation--sawyer.
College: 1877, Attended New Garden Boarding School (now Guilford College) at Greensboro, NC; had to quit school at age 18 following his father's death from typhoid fever
Ethnicity/Relig.: Raised as a Quaker in Marlboro and Nahunta Friends Meetings in North Carolina; abandoned the Quaker tradition of his ancestors and became Methodist after moving to Virginia in 1911 (but may have become Methodist before moving to Virginia)
Event: He and his immediate family had good mechanical ability and inventiveness. On 26 Apr 1897, while living at "Goldsborough, " he filed a patent to the U.S. Patent Office for a pipe wrench; patented 15 Jun 1897, No. 27211. It used a single piece of steel.
Medical Information: Is said to have cut 3 sets of teeth
Occupation: Farmer and cotton gin operator in North Carolina on the Pearson family homestead; apparently had a mechanic's shop while living at Goldsboro, NC, ca. 1897; farmer & meal/feed manufacturer in Virginia.
Personality/Intrst: Collected "National Geographic" magazines; enjoyed music and woodworking; made many pieces of furniture and cedar chests; was one of the early owners of a typewriter and a Model T Ford
Residence 1: Rt. 581, Fork Township, Wayne Co., NC (1865-abt 1900); Bellevue, Goldsboro, NC (abt. 1900-1911); in 1911 purchased the 340-acre Mt. Vernon farm at Briery, Prince Edward Co., VA on Rt. 15 where he moved with his 1st wife & 5 children
Residence 2: Bef. 1865, His parents lived at Sophia, Randolph Co., NC where his mother's family, the Newlins, lived. In 1865 his grandfather Lazarus Pearson of Wayne Co., NC died, so they moved to his farm in Fork Township where Joseph later lived with his first wife and children
Residence 3: Bet. 1865 - 1877, After he was six years old, his parents lived in Fork Township, Wayne Co., NC on present-day Route 581 just south of where the road crosses the Little River.
Residence 4: Bet. 1881 - 1900, Lived in the home of his grandfather Lazarus Pearson (the former John W. Sasser farm) just across the road from where his mother was living on Route 581, next to the Pearson Bridge. All of his children by his first wife were said to be born there.
Residence 5: Bet. 1901 - 1911, Sometime after 1901 he and his first wife and their children moved from Wayne County to Goldsboro, the county seat of Wayne County, where they lived in the Bellevue section in a house that later burned. He may have moved there before 1901.
Residence 6: Aft. 1911, Settled at Briery, Prince Edward Co., VA after purchasing the "Mount Vernon" farm on present-day Route 15, very close to the Prince Edward-Charlotte County boundary.
Notes for Joseph Lazarus Pearson:
Comments by Bryan S. Godfrey, great-grandson of Joseph Lazarus Pearson by his second marriage to Virginia Alexander Perrow:
Joseph Lazarus Pearson, the eldest of the eight children of John "Thomas" Pearson and Dicena Newlin Pearson, was born June 2, 1859. At this time his parents were living on a farm at Sophia in Randolph County, North Carolina, near where his mother's parents, Joseph and Ruth Farlow Newlin, lived at New Market. Joseph was named for his grandfathers, Joseph Newlin and Lazarus Pearson, both of whom were respected Quakers and had served as early trustees of New Garden Boarding School at Greensboro, North Carolina, which became Guilford College in 1888. Joseph's parents met while attending this Quaker academy. Joseph and his three eldest siblings, John, William, and Emily, were birthright members of Marlboro Friends Meeting at Sophia, to which the family of their mother had belonged since her mother's people, the Farlows, settled in that area in the mid-1700's. Interestingly, at the time of his birth in 1859, all of Joseph's grandparents and four of his great-grandparents were still living. His living great-grandparents were Thomas Edgerton, III (1785-1863) and Absilla Pike Edgerton (1788-1865) of Buck Swamp Township, Wayne County, North Carolina; Nathaniel Newlin (1768-1867) of Bloomingdale, Parke County, Indiana; and Isaac Farlow (1767-1860) of Randolph County, North Carolina. Joseph probably saw his Great-Grandfather Farlow as an infant, but whether he ever saw his Edgerton great-grandparents is not known, but doubtful since his parents did not move to Wayne County until 1865. It is assumed that his Great-Grandfather Newlin never returned to North Carolina after settling in Indiana in 1826. Since Joseph lived to become a great-grandfather himself, he lived through seven generations of his family.
Joseph's paternal grandfather, Lazarus Pearson, died in March, 1865, and it was probably later that year that his parents moved to Wayne County in time for his father to become administrator of the estate. Joseph's maternal grandfather also died in August of that year. The remainder of Joseph's childhood was spent in Wayne County's Fork Township, along present-day Route 581, where the Pearson property was alongside the southern shore of Little River. In August, 1995, the John Thomas Pearson home, which was probably built by Thomas, was still standing on Route 581 next to Luke's Auto but had been condemned. It had been occupied by a black family many years, and by 1995 a new predominantly African-American neighborhood had been developed on the old Pearson estate. The only old homes there at that time were the Thomas Pearson place and the Lazarus Pearson home across the road and nearer to what was formerly known as Pearson Bridge, where Route 581 crosses the Little River. The African-American family who owned the Lazarus Pearson home at this time, Mr. and Mrs. Charlie Lofton, knew their home as the "old Joe Sasser place." It was from John W. Sasser that Lazarus Pearson bought 1000 acres on the south side of Little River in the 1850's. After moving to Wayne County, Joseph and his siblings were affiliated with Nahunta Friends Meeting, where the Pearson family had worshipped ever since Ichabod Pearson I, Joseph's great-grandfather, moved to Wayne County from Perquimans County, North Carolina in 1776. The other four children of Thomas and Dicena, James, Minnie, Mary, and Thomas Oliver, were born in Wayne County.
Joe and his brother John were attending New Garden Boarding School when their father died of typhoid fever in 1877 at the age of forty. As the eldest boys in a family of eight children, one of whom had already died in infancy, they quit school to help their mother run the farm. Their father had a cotton gin between his house and Pearson Bridge which Joseph and John operated in addition to farming the land. Like many of the Pearsons, Joe and John were mechanically gifted, and Joe eventually operated a shop on the property.
Following his marriage to Mary Elizabeth Deans, Joseph lived in his Grandfather Pearson's home across from his mother, the one known as the Joe Sasser place. According to "History of the Pearson Family of Wayne County, North Carolina 1700-1981" (1982) by Joseph's niece, Ruth Pearson Harper (1901-1985) of Roanoke, Alabama, daughter of his brother John, all of Joseph's children by Mary were born on this farm. Joseph and Mary had eight children. Luby, who was probably the eldest, died in infancy, and no dates of birth and death have been found for him. Another daughter, Rella, died at age nine in 1900, said to have been from pneumonia. Where she and Luby are buried is unknown, but it was probably the Pearson-Lewis-Gurley-Edgerton family plot north of the Little River, though no graves have been found for them. Joseph's spinster aunt, Elizabeth F. ("Lizzie") Pearson (1842-1927), lived with Joseph and Mary in her parents' home until the fall of 1887, when she moved to Ackworth, Iowa. Joseph's mother died of pneumonia in 1897 at the age of sixty, and after her death, the Pearson homestead began to break up as her children moved away. Most of the original heirs of the Lazarus Pearson estate, consisting of Joseph's father and his aunts and uncles, had either died young and unmarried or had gone West, and Joseph's father was the only surviving child of Lazarus Pearson who remained in Wayne County. The homestead had passed out of the family by 1912.
Joseph and Mary's youngest child, Edgar Paul Pearson, known as Paul or Polly, was born in 1901, so it was probably after his birth that they moved to town at Goldsboro, the seat of Wayne County, about ten miles away from Fork Township. They lived in a house called Bellevue which later burned down. It is uncertain as to what type of work Joseph did after they moved to town, but according to the 1910 census, he was a sawyer. It is likely that he did machining work and owned a shop since he was mechanically gifted and good at woodwork. He enjoyed making furniture, and while living in Goldsboro, a table he made was pictured in the Goldsboro newspape
According to Mrs. Harper in her Pearson book, Joseph grew weary of the unhealthful conditions of the swampy lowlands of Eastern North Carolina, which resulted in frequent bouts of malarial chills and typhoid fever, and began to seek land on higher ground. She mentioned that in 1910 he wrote a letter to his Uncle Oliver Newlin in which he considered purchasing land near him in Randolph, his native county, but the price was too high. He then toured the southern part of Virginia and finally found a farm which suited him in Prince Edward County, about three miles from Keysville in Charlotte County.
On February 7, 1911, Joseph and Mary moved from Goldsboro to the "Mount Vernon" farm at Briery in Prince Edward County, Virginia with their children John, Minnie, Harvey, Ross, and Paul. Their only surviving child who did not accompany them was daughter Annie Pearson Edwards (1886-1958), who was already married with children and remained in Wayne County, moving to Goldsboro in her later years. The other children were not married yet. "Mount Vernon" was a farm of about 340 acres located on the Farmville Road (present-day U.S. 15) about a quarter mile north of the intersection of State Route 654 with Route 15. This area is known as Briery and is very near the boundary between Prince Edward County and Charlotte County.
Joseph was an early owner of a Model T Ford. How he and his family made the move to Virginia in 1911 is uncertain. It was rather late by then for them to have come on horseback, and since automobiles were still very rare and owned almost exclusively by the wealthy, they probably came by train.
Either before or upon moving to Virginia, Joseph forfeited the Quaker affiliation of his ancestors and became a Methodist.
Mary was very feeble after giving birth to her youngest child. This could have been part of the reason why Joseph sought a home on higher ground. She then was stricken with tuberculosis and died December 12, 1917, six years after moving to Virginia, at the age of fifty-six. By this time daughter Minnie was married to H. Ashley Tuggle (1866-1955) and living in town at Keysville, but all of the sons were still living on the farm.
As a strong believer in self-reliance and the Protestant work ethic, Joseph is said to have worked his sons very hard on his farm, so much so that it is believed at least one of them rebelled and moved on to other lines of work. None of Joseph and Mary's children except Ross took up farming. Minnie lived at Keysville, where her husband Ashley Tuggle was a machinist who was heir to his father's fortune acquired from having invented a better type of exterior light for trains. The oldest surviving son, John, remained a bachelor and eventually left the farm in favor of employment at a hardware store in Keysville. Harvey moved to Richmond and became a watch repairman. Ross went to Norfolk, worked for the Norfolk and Western Railroad as a steam shovel operator, and returned to Briery shortly thereafter where he continued working for the railroad and also engaged in farming on the property of his wife's family. Edgar "Paul" Pearson (1901-1980), the youngest, joined the Navy and after marriage lived near Altavista in Campbell County, Virginia, where he worked for the Lane Company.
Two years after Mary died, at the age of sixty Joseph married Virginia Alexander ("Virgie") Perrow on January 15, 1920, a native of Campbell County, Virginia, who was 24 years his junior. There are two conflicting stories concerning how Joseph and Virgie met. The first, as told by his daughter Minnie, states that Joseph was attending a fair where Virgie was demonstrating a sewing machine for the Singer Sewing Machine Company, for which she worked in Norfolk. The second story, as remembered by Joseph and Virgie's daughters Ella and Virginia, states that they met somehow through Virgie's cousin, Mary Gordon Moon Parker, of Lynchburg, Virginia. Perhaps both stories are partially true, and maybe Mary Gordon was with Virgie at the fair when she met Joseph. Joseph and Virgie were married at Baltimore, Maryland, which is where Virgie's sister Ora and husband, Welford Garner, lived. Virgie and Ora were particularly close, as they had lived together and worked in Norfolk before marriage. Virgie's parents, William "Adolphus" Perrow, Sr. and Ella Walker Perrow of Campbell County, issued wedding invitations, and one of them was inherited by daughter Ella.
Joseph and Virgie had three daughters, Ella Perrow, Virginia Ford, and Ora Garner. Ella was named for Virgie's mother, Ella Walker Perrow, Virginia's middle name was for a Ford family that lived near the Pearsons, and Ora was named for Virgie's sister in Baltimore. When Ella, the oldest, was born, Joseph was almost 62 years old and Virgie was 38, and his oldest grandchild was fifteen at the time!
As a talented man of many interests, Joseph established a self-sufficient farm at Briery and was relatively prominent compared to his neighbors as shown by the fact that when the Depression came on, his mortgage was already paid off. His farm had a spring which was dammed up to form a large pond, where Joseph built a grist mill from which he produced meal and feed. He was one of the early owners of the typewriter, with which he frequently wrote letters to his family using stationery with a letterhead, "Joseph L. Pearson, Manufacturer of Meal & Feed, General Farming." This no doubt influenced two of his daughters by his second wife Virgie, Ella and Virginia, to go to business school and become secretaries.
Joseph continued his woodworking hobby in Virginia and made furniture. After marrying Virgie, he made a cedar chest for Virgie's mother, Ella Walker Perrow, who ironically was four months younger than he! He and Virgie attached a typewritten note to the inside of it as follows: "To Mother, With unmitigated love and in appreciation of her great kindness to us. Virgie and Joseph make her this little present which we hope she will accept and that it will be of service with love." It is said that Joseph grew the tree from which he got the wood to make this chest, but since he moved to Virginia in 1911 and Ella Perrow died in 1927, this is doubtful, considering how slow cedar trees grow. Virgie's youngest sister, Phanie Perrow Flynn, inherited this chest from their mother. After Phanie's death in 1995, her daughter, Marguerite Flynn Harry of McCormick, South Carolina, insisted it go back to the Pearson family and in January, 2000 graciously gave it to me, a grandson of Joseph and Virgie's daughter Ella. I now use it to store framed family portraits which I hope to hang someday when I live in a larger place.
Joseph also enjoyed reading and music. He played several musical instruments, including the banjo, and he and Virgie had a piano. An avid reader, Joseph acquired a respectable library and is especially remembered for being one of the early subscribers to "National Geographic" magazine, of which he accumulated many volumes.
Joseph farmed cotton, strawberries, grapes, and other crops. According to Ruth Pearson Harper in her book, her father, John Newlin Pearson, rooted scuppernong and muscadine grape vines and mailed them to his brother Joseph to plant on his farm. One of the longest trips of John's life was to visit Joseph, and Joseph also returned to North Carolina occasionally to visit his family.
Even though she was 32 years his junior, Joseph was especially close with his first cousin, Hessie Newlin Davis (1891-1979) of Sophia, North Carolina, daughter of Joseph's uncle Oliver Newlin (1842-1934). Hessie and her husband Jerome visited Joseph and Virgie when their five children and Joseph and Virgie's daughters were very young. Joseph frequently wrote to Hessie, and in 1996, Hessie's daughters, Mary Alice Davis Allred (1918-1997) and Emily Davis Pugh (1922-2004) of Trinity, North Carolina, began insisting on giving these and other Newlin family memorabilia to Joseph and Virgie's great-grandson, Bryan Godfrey. In a letter to Hessie dated March 29, 1919, Joseph discusses having bought a full carat, gold Tiffany diamond ring for $200 for a woman he intends to marry, without giving her name, but of course it is Virgie he is referring to. He also refers to a failed romance he had with a girl who lived near Hessie at Sophia, whom he only refers to as "O." Emily Pugh says this is Ora Loflin Farlow (1892-1978), who apparently courted Joseph after Mary's death and before she met her husband, a distant cousin of Joseph and Hessie. It is coincidental that Joseph courted a women named Ora before meeting Virgie, who had a sister and an aunt named Ora, for whom they would name their youngest daughter. In a letter to Hessie dated May 15, 1927, Joseph states that all his boys were gone from the farm and he and Virgie were busy there raising their three small girls. He was apparently replying to a note from Hessie about the deaths of their uncle, Duncan Newlin (1839-1927), his wife Lodoski, and another uncle, Franklin Farlow, within a short time. In this letter Joseph indicates he does not hear from his siblings very often, that he heard his sister Emily had remarried and moved near Hessie, and that there had been strained relations between him and some of his brothers concerning the settlement of their mother's estate.
Because he lived away from his family, Joseph's daughters by Virgie did not know their father's kinfolk in North Carolina. Most of his siblings died either before or shortly after they were born. However, Joseph and his family received occasional visits from his relatives, including his brother John, John's children Earl, Ruth, Sallie, and Mary, his brother Jimmy in Goldsboro, and his youngest brother Oliver and wife Clyde in Memphis, Tennessee. Joseph's daughters Ella and Virginia also recall a visit from some drably dressed Quaker relations whom Virginia remembers were Newlins. But it was mainly Virgie's family in the Lynchburg, Virginia area who visited the Pearsons often, as they would take the train to Briery and get off where the tracks ran behind the "Mount Vernon" property.
Two of Joseph's nieces, Margaret Pearson Hicks (1910-2004) of Cary, North Carolina, daughter of his brother William, and Esther Edgerton Allen (1911-2004) of Rocky Mount, North Carolina, and Virginia Beach, Virginia, daughter of Joseph's sister Mary, said they never met their Uncle Joseph. Mary Pearson Edgerton died in childbirth at age 41 in 1915, and her husband Haskell remarried shortly thereafter.
Joseph continued working on his farm and had a sharp mind until the end. He suffered a heart attack and died three weeks later at home on June 27, 1944 at the age of eighty-five. Virgie wrote a letter to Hessie on June 25, 1944 stating that the doctors were giving them very little hope since Joseph's heart attack. Since Joseph died two days later, he was probably already dead by the time Hessie received it. Jim Jones of Gladys, Virginia, the husband of Virgie's sister Ilene, was a wheelwright and furnished the casket in which Joseph was buried. He was buried beside his first wife Mary and their son John, who died nine years before Joseph, at Ash Camp Baptist Church on Route 40 at Keysville.
Fortunately, Joseph lived long enough to see his three daughters by Virgie get married. Ella and her husband, Ray Overstreet, were living in Newport News, Virginia and working in the Newport News Shipbuilding. Ora and her new husband, Wilbur Dowdy, were also living temporarily in Newport News, as he was in the U.S. Navy and she was working for the telephone company. Virginia, the middle daughter, who at her father's insistence was known as Ford growing up but became known as Virginia after his death, was living at the Pearson farm when Joseph died with her infant daughter Carolyn. Her husband, Ed Wheeler, was also in the Navy.
Shortly after his death, Virgie sold Joseph's farm and most of his belongings that the heirs did not want. His grandson, Hugh Pearson Tuggle (1919-2001), bought his Model T Ford from the estate and drove it for several years before it wound up on a car lot at Chase City, Virginia. Many of Joseph's antiques, including his clocks, were acquired by his son Ross, whose sons became avid antique collectors and still preserve them in their homes at Briery. Virgie moved with her daughter Virginia to Lynchburg and outlived Joseph by eleven years.
Interest in clocks and watches has run in the Pearson family. Joseph's youngest brother, Oliver, became a jewelry, watch, and clock repairman and merchant at Memphis, Tennessee. Joseph's son Harvey followed this vocation in the backyard shop of his home at 4211 Stonewall Avenue in the Forest Hills subdivision of Richmond. In the third generation, Joseph's grandson, H.P. Tuggle, continued this trade in his backyard shop behind his late parents' Victorian home on Route 360 at Keysville.
The "Mount Vernon" estate passed through several owners before it was restored by the Dunn family in the early 1990's, who sold it shortly thereafter. By erecting bricks and columns around the outside while leaving the inside intact, the Dunns made it a mansion, a lot more pretentious than it looked when the Pearsons owned it. The original home was said to have been built by slaves before the Civil War, and it had a graveyard behind it, but no tombstones remain. The property was for sale again in 1998 for about $700,000. When the movie "Sommersby" was being filmed near there at Charlotte Court House in the early 1990's, the lead actor, Richard Gere, stayed in the home. Ross Pearson's sons, who lived very near the homeplace, and were excellent cooks and hosts, graciously hosted several family get-togethers at which they took family members to see their grandfather's home since its restoration.
Since he abandoned Quakerism, most of Joseph's descendants are probably unacquainted with the Quaker, or Friends, faith, yet it is a unique tradition for which they should be very proud. It is mainly because Quaker meetings recorded births, deaths, marriages, and other events in the lives of their members, that Joseph's family is well-traced on most sides, even back to the 1600's and earlier in England and Ireland. Beginning in the 1930's, William Wade Hinshaw compiled these records of Quaker meetings, which in 1950 he published as several volumes entitled "Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy." Joseph's family and distant cousins were also fortunate because their family histories were preserved in numerous books and articles written on their ancestral families, nearly all of which can be found in the North Carolina Friends Historical Collection in the Guilford College Library at Greensboro. Founded in the 1650's by George Fox and others who acquired followers among the farmers and artisans of northern England, where the Pearsons originated, the Society of Friends became known as Quakers originally out of derision due to their unusual worship practices. Since their faith opposed the rigid formalities and perceived superficialities of the Church of England, or Established Church, Quakers were persecuted in England and Ireland in the late 1600's and early 1700's. This is the main reason for why Joseph's ancestors settled in America, mainly in Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. Several of the ones who came to Pennsylvania were friends of William Penn, who successfully established a Quaker Utopia in his colony which became a model for the new government of the United States in 1787.
Quakers were unprecedented in advocating humanitarian ideals which stood far ahead of their time, including peace, equality, liberty, tolerance, temperance, simplicity, and humility. They extended personal liberty and equality to encompass all persons, including women and non-whites, and because of this, Quakers were early leaders in promoting antislavery and campaigning for humane treatment and equality of the sexes, races, and social classes. With several exceptions, most of Joseph's family opposed slavery and went to Indiana and other non-slave areas of the Midwest during the early 1800's, and the ones who remained in North Carolina aroused jealousy and antipathy from their slaveholding neighbors because they were able to acquire wealth without slaves. The stereotypes most people have of Quakers as being drab and plain-clothed is mainly due to early Quaker perceptions that pride is sinful and that is is best to practice moderation while avoiding pretentiousness. Furthermore, Quakers were noted for promoting higher education and literacy for all, including women, in a day when it was rare, especially among agrarian families in the South. As a result, Joseph Pearson's family and distant relations were well-connected with Guilford College, and numerous family members have achieved distinction in scholarly pursuits far out of proportion to the average family. The distinctive academic successes of Quakers has been attributed to a theory that their superior thinking abilities stemmed from the Quaker belief that one's thought processes and prayer should be guided by meditation and the Inner Light.
Joseph shared common American ancestors with both Quaker Presidents of the United States, Herbert Hoover and Richard Nixon. According to his grandson Dan Pearson, Joseph claimed to be related to Hoover, but it is not known what basis he had to make that claim since the connection was remote and he had no way of knowing his actual connections to Hoover through both the Elliott family of North Carolina and the French family of New Jersey on his father's side. Perhaps it was because Hoover was descended from a Pierson family of Pennsylvania, but there is no known kinship to Joseph's Quaker Pearsons of North Carolina. He was also distantly related to the second Quaker President, Richard Milhous Nixon, several ways by both blood and marriage, the blood connections being through both the Mendenhall and Maris families of Pennsylvania.
The following is my great-grandfather's obituary in the "Richmond Times-Dispatch," June 29, 1944:
Pearson Rites Set for Today At Farmville [incorrect--near Keysville]
FARMVILLE--Joseph L. Pearson, 85, died at his home near Keysville, June 27. He was a son of Thomas and Dicena Pearson, of Guilford [incorrect--Wayne County], N.C. He is survived by his wife, Mrs. Virginia Perrow Pearson, three sons, J.H., of Richmond; O.L. of Keysville; and E.P. Pearson, of Altavista; five daughters, Mrs. H.A. [Minnie] Tuggle and Mrs. E.L. [Virginia] Wheeler, of Keysville; Mrs. L.D. [Annie] Edwards, of Goldsboro, N.C.; Mrs. M.R. [Ella] Overstreet and Mrs. W.C. [Ora] Dowdy, of Newport News; two brothers [James R. Pearson of Goldsboro, NC and T. Oliver Pearson of Memphis, TN] and a sister [Emily Pearson Smith Bulla of Wilmington, NC].
The funeral will be held at 2 P.M. Thursday, at the home. Interment will be in the family cemetery [incorrect--Ash Camp Baptist Church, Keysville]. The Rev. Mr. Boyd will have charge of the services.
The following longer obituary was located and emailed to me in 2013 by a fellow findagrave.com contributor:
The Charlotte Gazette
Drakes Branch VA
Thursday
July 13, 1944
Joseph Lazarus Pearson Buried at Ash Camp
Funeral services for Joseph Lazarus Pearson, aged 85, were held at Ash Camp Cemetery, Keysville, June 29, Rev. G.H. Boyd of the Methodist Church conducting the services.
The deceased was a resident of Goldsboro, N.C., until 1910, when the family moved to the present home near Keysville. He was twice married, his first wife being Miss Mary Elizabeth Deane of Goldsboro, who preceded him to the grave in 1917. Five children survive this union, as follows: Mrs. Luby Edwards of Greensboro; J.H. Pearson, of Richmond; Mrs. H.A. Tuggle and O.R. Pearson, Keysville, and E.P. Pearson, of Altavista. Several years later he married Miss Virginia Perrow of Concord, Va. Three daughters survive this union, who are Mrs. Roy Overstreet and Mrs. Wilbur Dowdy of Newport News, and Mrs. E.L. L. Wheeler of Keysville. Also one sisters, Mrs. Dan Bulla, of Wilmington, N.C., and two brothers, J.R. Pearson, of Goldsboro, N.C., and T.O. Pearson, of Memphis, Tenn., with seventeen grand children and five great grand children.
The fllwing were pallbearers; Thomas Hogan, Raleigh younger, P.B. Thompson, E.M. Arvin, H.D. Peters, H.L. Wheeler and Floyd Garrett.
The honorary pallbearers were Lewis V. Pettus, L.J. Yeaman, Hogan Waddell, G.E. Garrett, L.P. Sheppard, Hubert Clark and Dick Epperson.
Flower bearers: Raymond Pearson, Reginald Pearson, Dan Pearson, Kathryn Pearson, Mary Tuggle, Helen Sue Tuggle, Billy Tuggle, Thomas Younger, Ruth Morgan, Robert Perrow, Mrs. Mason, Ruby Dowdy and Olaf Waddell.
More About Joseph Lazarus Pearson:
Burial: Unknown, Ash Camp Baptist Church, Rt. 40, Keysville, VA
Cause of Death: Myocarditis; heart attack; suffered a heart attack three weeks before he died
Census: 1910, Living at Goldsboro, Wayne Co., NC. Occupation--sawyer.
College: 1877, Attended New Garden Boarding School (now Guilford College) at Greensboro, NC; had to quit school at age 18 following his father's death from typhoid fever
Ethnicity/Relig.: Raised as a Quaker in Marlboro and Nahunta Friends Meetings in North Carolina; abandoned the Quaker tradition of his ancestors and became Methodist after moving to Virginia in 1911 (but may have become Methodist before moving to Virginia)
Event: He and his immediate family had good mechanical ability and inventiveness. On 26 Apr 1897, while living at "Goldsborough, " he filed a patent to the U.S. Patent Office for a pipe wrench; patented 15 Jun 1897, No. 27211. It used a single piece of steel.
Medical Information: Is said to have cut 3 sets of teeth
Occupation: Farmer and cotton gin operator in North Carolina on the Pearson family homestead; apparently had a mechanic's shop while living at Goldsboro, NC, ca. 1897; farmer & meal/feed manufacturer in Virginia.
Personality/Intrst: Collected "National Geographic" magazines; enjoyed music and woodworking; made many pieces of furniture and cedar chests; was one of the early owners of a typewriter and a Model T Ford
Residence 1: Rt. 581, Fork Township, Wayne Co., NC (1865-abt 1900); Bellevue, Goldsboro, NC (abt. 1900-1911); in 1911 purchased the 340-acre Mt. Vernon farm at Briery, Prince Edward Co., VA on Rt. 15 where he moved with his 1st wife & 5 children
Residence 2: Bef. 1865, His parents lived at Sophia, Randolph Co., NC where his mother's family, the Newlins, lived. In 1865 his grandfather Lazarus Pearson of Wayne Co., NC died, so they moved to his farm in Fork Township where Joseph later lived with his first wife and children
Residence 3: Bet. 1865 - 1877, After he was six years old, his parents lived in Fork Township, Wayne Co., NC on present-day Route 581 just south of where the road crosses the Little River.
Residence 4: Bet. 1881 - 1900, Lived in the home of his grandfather Lazarus Pearson (the former John W. Sasser farm) just across the road from where his mother was living on Route 581, next to the Pearson Bridge. All of his children by his first wife were said to be born there.
Residence 5: Bet. 1901 - 1911, Sometime after 1901 he and his first wife and their children moved from Wayne County to Goldsboro, the county seat of Wayne County, where they lived in the Bellevue section in a house that later burned. He may have moved there before 1901.
Residence 6: Aft. 1911, Settled at Briery, Prince Edward Co., VA after purchasing the "Mount Vernon" farm on present-day Route 15, very close to the Prince Edward-Charlotte County boundary.
Family Members
Siblings
Children
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John Thomas Pearson II
1883–1935
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Annie Beatrice Pearson Edwards
1886–1958
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Minnie Elizabeth Pearson Tuggle
1887–1979
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Rella Alma Pearson
1890–1900
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Joseph Harvey "Harvey" Pearson
1893–1975
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Oliver Ross "Ross" Pearson Sr
1898–1976
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Edgar Paul "Pollie" Pearson
1901–1980
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Ella Perrow Pearson Overstreet
1921–2008
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Virginia Ford Pearson Wheeler
1922–2014
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Ora Garner Pearson Dowdy
1925–1968
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Luby Pearson
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