A Pearson Anglo-Saxon Past

There must be an Anglo-Saxon past to the Pearson family name. There are no records but the weight of history demands it.

Bayeux Tapestry

The Harrying of the North

The family patriarch, Edward Peersonne, hails from Wilmslow Parish in Cheshire County, far in the north of England. It was there, far from London, that Anglo-Saxons bridled against Norman rule, and there that the last stages of the Mercian uprising was brutally put down by the bastard William in his winter campaign of 1069-1070. They called it "harrying". Fields and livestock were destroyed and William's men laid waste to villages and slaughtered man, woman and child.

New Norman populations were invited in and the survivors labored on.

Kingdom of Mercia

A Viking past?

There is the following totally unsubstantiated claim on Ancestry that I paraphrase:

The Pearson name is of Danish or Norman origin. Tradition has it that the Pearsons were Vikings, who left Scandinavia and went both to England and France, especially to Normandy. English Vikings bearing our name settled in Northumberland, a county of northern England between the Humber and the Fifth of Forth, before 1200 A.D.

Our own clan chose Wilmslow, Mobberley and the surrounding hamlets in Cheshire County. The city of Chester was the terminus of the Norman conquest, and some historians think that the Pearson name came to England via the Norman Conquest of 1066 A.D.

Blond hair, blue eyes, and long noses exist in the Pearson family line, I have them, but where it came from is anyone's guess.Vikings were blond haired and blue eyed and long nosed, as were many Anglo-Saxons. One should also keep in mind that the Normans themselves were originally Vikings who settled on the French coast.

And please don't forget the Swedes and Danes and King Canute who famously tried to hold back the tides.