{"id":377,"date":"2011-02-04T20:25:30","date_gmt":"2011-02-05T01:25:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/e-gen.info\/?page_id=377"},"modified":"2022-03-25T10:31:19","modified_gmt":"2022-03-25T15:31:19","slug":"introduction-pearce","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/e-gen.info\/?page_id=377","title":{"rendered":"Introduction: Pearce"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

by
\nLarry Pearce
\n1\/12\/06, 1\/19\/11
\n( LRYPEARCE@GMAIL.COM<\/a> )
\nE-mail address revised 3\/25\/22<\/p>\n

I teach communications at the college level, and one of the first assignments I give my basic writing students is to tell a story from their lives. They work from a simple timeline that begins with their birth. Occasionally, when a student has difficulty starting, I\u2019ll suggest that he\/she begin with the phrase probably every child in the world has heard, \u201cOnce upon a time and far away.\u201d Somehow, that magically transports them to another place and allows their memories to flood their minds and spill out onto the page. It\u2019s beginning that\u2019s the hard part. And so it was as I began the enormous task of revising a thousand pages of family history this year and changing web addresses because my old one was too small. I love to write and my passion for genealogical research began just before a trip I took with my wife to England in 1995. In those days before most every American home had a computer, I looked forward to annual family reunions when I could hear the stories of my origins and thought that someday I\u2019d make the time to travel to the great Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. to verify those tales. The only written Pearce Family genealogy I had ever seen up to that point was a brief college project my Uncle Dale had presented to our family reunion years earlier. By the time I had read it seriously, the family branches in the back were very outdated. About the time we were planning our trip overseas, my dad awarded me a box that he had rescued from my Grandmother Bessie\u2019s house after Grandfather Wesley died and she was about to move. In another article in this series titled \u201cTreasures in an Old Box,\u201d<\/a> I list and describe some of the golden memories in that small container. But perhaps the most life-changing document I came across was the hand-typed, four-page original family narrative, <\/a>perhaps over a hundred years old. In a romantic tale, surely handed down for generations, the unknown storyteller may as well have begun, \u201cOnce upon a time and far away,\u201d because as you\u2019ll find when you read it, it has the power to ignite the curiosity to ask, \u201cCould this possibly have been?\u201d or state, \u201cSomeone should make a movie of this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before our subsequent trip to England, I wrote to about half a dozen Pearces in and around the place suggested in the narrative as the origin of our family, Bourne in Lincolnshire<\/a>. Since then, birth records propose that our origins were probably in Wiltshire<\/a>, possibly the village of Aldbourne<\/a>, or Richard and Charles may have sailed from Bournemouth. But, continuing, you can read about Susan\u2019s and my tour of Bourne. We had a lovely and revealing time at the local library, the cemetery, and a home inhabited by Pearces, and perhaps best of all, we left a copy of the original family narrative with a British historian, Robert Penhey, for his lengthy interpretation. I have included it also in this series. One of the first things I did after I returned home and conducted extensive interviews was to e-mail as many Pearce relatives as I had addresses for, asking them to read and correct and comment on weekly articles that I wrote from my research. That original e-mail is available and served as the introduction to the E-GEN internet project that ran on Geocities.com until 2009.<\/p>\n

So, now, with the new year and a new devotion to revising and updating this project, having taken additional trips to Germany, Switzerland, Northern Ireland, and Scotland that included family research, I offer this Introduction to our Pearce Family with the challenge to you to begin your own research: scan old pictures and identify those therein, interview your senior relatives and transcribe the stories they remember, and send me everything you can so that, together, we can preserve our family heritage using the latest technology.<\/p>\n

Last revised 5\/23\/18<\/p>\n

General Pearce Inquiry<\/strong> (Please respond below) – 5\/23\/18:<\/p>\n

My name is Ken Trantham and I recently came across your website. I am hoping you can perhaps point me in a direction. Two of my 3rd grandmothers were Pearces – Harriet (Pearce) Boren and Matilda Jane (Pearce) Goodger. Their fathers were first cousins, Spencer Pearce who died about 1826 in Lawrence County, TN and Daniel Pearce who migrated from Lawrence to Tishomingo County, MS and died in 1864. Spencer’s father was Charles Pearce who was living in Sumner County, TN after 1820 and Daniel’s father was Robert Pearce who died in 1837 in Lawrence.<\/p>\n

If my Pearce lineage seems a bit confusing it gets worse. I do not yet know how Charles and Robert were related. Spencer and Daniel were first cousins because their mothers were sisters. Charles was married to Elizabeth Hackney and Robert was married to her sister, Lavina Hackney.<\/p>\n

The name “Spencer Pearce” is significant somehow to both Charles and Robert. Charles named his son Spencer Pearce. When Robert’s brother, John, died in 1815, he left most of his estate to Robert’s children and Robert but he also bequeathed part of his property to a third brother,<\/p>\n

Spencer Pearce of Sumner County. Robert and the elder Spencer can be found living in Sumner prior to 1800 having both signed petitions. Robert named one of his sons by his second wife “Spencer”. (I don’t think he liked the name because the county clerk crossed it out and wrote “Anthony” over it!)<\/p>\n

Robert and Lavina Hackney were married in Shenandoah County, VA in 1787. In the 1790 census they had migrated to Greenville, SC and were living next to Lavina’s father, Daniel Hackney.<\/p>\n

This is where the trail ends for all of them. But I believe there might be a connection to Pennsylvania. On your website, I found mention of Isaac Pearce and Jonathan Pearce of Sumner who hied ties to Pennsylvania. Robert and elder Spencer were living in Sumner at about the same time as Isaac and Jonathan. When Spencer son of Charles and his wife died before 1830, a man by the name of Barnabas Gabel became the guardian of their children. Barnabas migrated to Lawrence County, TN from Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

I have thrown a lot of names at you and I am wondering if any of them seem familiar. Frankly, I am not sure where to look next for the origins of Robert, Charles, Spencer and John. Any assistance or insight would greatly appreciated.<\/p>\n

Thanks, Ken<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Larry Pearce 1\/12\/06, 1\/19\/11 ( LRYPEARCE@GMAIL.COM ) E-mail address revised 3\/25\/22 I teach communications at the college level, and one of the first assignments I give my basic writing students is to tell a story from their lives. They … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":20,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-377","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/e-gen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/e-gen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/e-gen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e-gen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e-gen.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=377"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/e-gen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11439,"href":"https:\/\/e-gen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/377\/revisions\/11439"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e-gen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/20"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/e-gen.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}