Two of my 4th great-grandmothers' maiden names were
Pearson and both lines stop cold there. The first is Catherine (Katherine)
Pearson. She married James
Adams about 1814. James was born about 1785 in the
Pendleton District of
South Carolina. They had at least 10 children; the known names are
Pearson (my line), Elizabeth, Jeptha, Malinda Jane, Charlotte, Charles, Ozilla and John Russell. Catherine was born around 1790 in
South Carolina. James and Catherine both died in
White County,
Georgia where the family settled before 1832.
Mahala
Pearson married
Meredith “Meardy”
Scruggs. She gave her state of birth as
South Carolina in several censuses, and the birth year was around 1800. Their known children were Martha, Rachel Rebecca, Jacob, William,
Mahala,
Ephraim, and Samantha. Meardy and
Mahala Scruggs were founding members of Friendship
Baptist Church in
Forsyth County,
Georgia. Meardy and three of their children died there in a typhoid epidemic in 1850. (I know Rachel,
Ephraim and Samantha survived the epidemic -- I don't know who the fourth surviving child was.) Mahala moved to the Pickens/Dawson county area after her husband's death and lived with two of her children -- she was found living with son
Ephraim Scruggs, and later her daughter Samantha
Scruggs Smith. She died sometime after 1880 in
Pickens or
Dawson county -- I don't know where she was buried.