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Pearsall Surname Project
Number of Pearsalls By Location
Maps by Family
Surname
History and Genealogy
of the Pearsall Family in England
and America:
Volume I
Front Cover
Inside Front Cover
The Motive
Thanks
Illustrations
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Appendix I
Volume II
Volume III
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finished by his brother Wulferus. He enjoyed his kingly dignity but five
months, being slain by his own wife, say some; by his mother, say others;
by whichsoever most unnaturally, in the very
feast of Easter, anno Dom. 656. The cycle of the sun that year being
twenty-one. The dominical letters (it being Bissextile) C.B. the cycle of
the moon eleven. Easter fell upon the seventeenth day of April, on which
day he was murdered. Peada was a man full grown
before he came to kingly dignity, and this he only enjoyed as an
under-king to his father-in-law Oswi of Northumbria and after his death, King Oswy swayed the scepter of Mercia between two and
three years; at which time Immin, Eaba, and Eadberht, three
captains of the Mercians, rebelling against Oswy, prevailed, and lifted up Wulferus,
the second son of Penda, into the Mercian
throne. There can be no question that Peada was
connected with the history of Staffordshire as on his return home, after
he became a Christian, he brought four priests along with him, one of
whom Dicema made his place of habitation at
Litchfield, and the others were placed in other churches in the vicinity
of Peshale. [Rev. Stebbins Shaw, History of
Staffordshire, vol. 1, page 231.]
The editor of
The Parshall Family Book,
says that he found the name spelled Peashale, a
form which the most diligent search failed to show to reward our efforts,
except as written by some clerk of the records long after the family name
Peshale had become extinct. Peashale
is purely colloquial and was used only by Robert Peshall
of Bloor Pipe and Sir John Peshall of Horsley
as the sound value of their surname when they returned to the spelling of
Peshall as their surname at the beginning of
the seventeenth century. It never was used as the name of the manor or to
indicate the village. Hence this was a very modern way of sounding the
name of the old manor. It cannot possibly indicate anything of value in
the determination of the origin of this place name. The author of the Parshall book accepts this as the oldest form, and
concludes therefore that it is derived from the old Anglo-Saxon compound Peashealh or Peashale,
signifying the home of the Peacock. The Anglo-Saxon for Peacock, he says,
was parva or pea, the latter being the
contracted form. "This noun being weak masculine normally took the
weak genitive inflexion N becoming pean, but to
form the compound peashealh it must have taken
the strong inflexion S; the explanation of this is that the word pea was
in this case the name of a man and so would take the strong inflexion in
the genitive like other proper nouns." This explanation not only
destroys the value of the first element Pe with
its paar sound but it is remark-able as coming
from one whose whole book is predicated upon the statement that the ah or
broad sound of A is a vitally essential part of the first element of the
name, whence his name Parshall. He is, however,
in agreement with all who have studied the first element, as to its
meaning and signification,-namely, that it is the name of a man and that
it represents the first element of his name and is the equivalent of Pea,
sounded phonetically as Paar, e having the
broad sound of a and a having the sound of ar
or ah.
It could only be
the name of a king whose connection with this vicinity would be recalled
for so long a period as to lose all but the first element in his name,
and there was no other Saxon king except Peada
who could possibly meet the requirements. This King's name was
phonetically Paardah and it is easy to see how
in
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