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.