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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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son, Edmond of Bromley,
Kent,
called himself Peshall, although he had been
born Pearsall and had so been entered at college. But as his sons died
without male heirs this designation died with them. The other two sons of
Edmond,
Robert and Thomas, adhered to the Pearsall spelling. The sons of Robert,
the oldest son of Edmond, came to America
at the close of the seventeenth century where they were known as
Pearsall. This line finally became centered in James Pearsall, grandson
of Robert, and he changed the spelling of his name to Parshall,
thereby becoming the genearch of the American
family of Parshall.
Thomas Pearsall,
the younger son of Edmond, came to America, settling in the Chesapeake
country of both Virginia and Maryland. He
called himself Pearsall. Later some of his sons came to New York where the eldest son Thomas
married into a Dutch family and some of his descendants went back to the Ranton form of Persall and
others to Parcel. But they did not however change the sound value of
their name. Hence we find in the records of the Dutch Reformed Church of
New York, and in New Jersey as well, that the clerk
wrote the name Pearsall just as frequently as he wrote the more accepted
Dutch spelling Persall. Another branch migrated
to Pennsylvania
where the spelling was changed to Peirsall and Piersall, so as to more accurately record the sound
values of the name. Still later, according to family tradition, there was
in one branch in Dutchess County, New York, a
marked political difference growing out of the Revolution, and one
brother changed the spelling of his name to Piersall,
which is exactly the same spelling and the same sound value as is given
by the clerk of the Grocers Guild in London, when he wrote the name of
our ancestor Edmund Pearsall, whom the clerk knew intimately and met
daily for quite a number of years. At the same time the clerk of records
of the Inns of Court, who knew him equally well, recorded his name as
Pearsall. Thus they both placed on record the same statement of sound
value concerning his name as they both knew it, and at this particular
time he spelled his name Pearsall.
The family name
when our ancestors came to America was known and spelled as Pearsall, but
for some reason or other, not easy to entirely understand, there has been
very much variation of spelling of their surname among the descendants of
these first emigrants who were the sons and grandsons of Edmond Pearsall,
merchant and trader of London. The following list will give some of the
present day designations of the American members of this family,
viz.:-Pearsall, Parcell, Parsells,
Parsels, Parsill, Pearcall, Pearceall, Pearsel, Pearsell, Persall, Persel, Pershall, Parshall, Perzel, Piercall, Pierceall, Piersall, Purcall, Pursell, Purcel, Purcell, Purkell, Pursel, Persee, Pursell, Pussal, Pyssel, Pearsol, Pearsoll, PierŽsol, Peirsol, Parcelle, Parsells, Parcells, Parcoll, Parsoll, Parsolls, Parsil, Persil, Parsils, Persils, Perceaull, Pearceaull, Pertil, Peartil, and many
other forms of the same name. The reader, it is hoped, will find his own
manner of spelling the family name in the above list but if he fails he
need not be discouraged as the record herein of the American branches
will disclose his peculiar style along with the pedigree of his branch of
the family.
The difficulty
in gathering the records has not been, so far as the living members of
the family are concerned, to get the facts, but to make the individuals
believe that the way they used to designate their surname was not
necessarily
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