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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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his Dictionary,
published in 1912, of surnames of England, gives the phonetics
and orthography of the family name as Pearsall, Persaul,
Persoll, and shows no other way of expressing
this surname.
The subject of
the changes in the spelling of the family name will be more particularly
referred to in relating the stories of the several generations of the
family in the following history; it will then be possible to enter in
greater detail into the reasons for the particular incidents to which we
can now only briefly refer. But the reader must not lose sight of the important
fact that the family in Staffordshire was well satisfied with the
original spelling of Peshale, as modified into Peshall, until after the battle of Bosworth Field,
and the modification then adopted by the Horsley and Ranton
branches of the family continued in some branches of the Ranton family until the present day, and by the
home-staying members of the Horsley branch until the male line became
extinct. And that those who followed the lead of Edmond Pearsall were
engaged either in wool growing or in cloth manufacture. Hence we find
that the spelling of Pearsall, among the Ranton
branch, is confined to those who at that time lived in or near Hales-owen. Kidderminster and several near by places in
Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Salop, and in Toynton
in Lancashire.
It must be
however kept in mind that this new spelling so far as Edmond Pearsall was
concerned did no more than to bring the family name into such form as to
express in Middle English the same pronunciation as had been adopted
about 1486 by the Horsley branch of the family. For an examination of the
records of that time, made by the clerks, especially at Eccleshall as early as 1535, when the system of
keeping parish records began, discloses that both the family name and the
name of the old village of Peshall, which had
grown up on the old manor from which our family name is derived, was
spelled as follows:-Pearsall, Pearshall, P'sall, Peashall, Peshall, Persall, Pershall, and Persoll. And
the same results would come from an examination of any of the parish
records of the places where these Pearsall families resided. For example,
in reading the records of the Church of St. Marys
at Kidderminster one is struck with the quickness with which the Persall spelling, which they had brought from their
old home in the Parish of Ranton, and which
they had continued in Hales Owen and elsewhere, became Pearsall as soon
as Edmond Pearsall began to visit the locality of Kidderminster in
connection with his trade as a merchant of the staple.
In making this
change the family as we have said followed the lead set by Edmond the merchant of the staple of London. The
Recorder of the Inns of Court and the clerk of the Grocers Guild, as well
as Cuthbert Booth, who knew him intimately, record his name the first as
Pearsall, and the second as Piersall, while
Cuthbert Booth, who had been having the most intimate dealings with him;
records in 1612 that Edmond
was called Pearsall, Pearshall and Persall. And as he spoke in the light of documents
before him, which had actually been signed by Edmond, it also discloses the way that
Edmond Pearsall followed before finally settling on the Pearsall
spelling. The progress being clearly indicated as that he came to London as Pershall, which he changed to Persall
by dropping the h. Then he went to Pearshall
thus taking up the beloved h. And finally he came to Pearsall, as he
found it impossible to carry the silent h in the language of the
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