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Edgar Percy Pearson 1871 - 1910
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Edgar Percy Pearson, usually known as 'Percy', was born 11 November 1871 in Turners Lane, Brierley Hill. His father, Edward Jewkes Pearson, was at this time living near the Brickworks 'E.J. & J. Pearson.'
By the 1890's he owned a Bicycle Manufacturing Business and Shop called the Blenheim & Woodstock Cycle Co. This was in Woodstock, Oxfordshire - the address being 'Ye Olde Post Offyce, Woodstock, Oxon.'
His letterheading, illustrated below, confirms the existence of this business in the 1890's, and it's address:
Family legend says that he was the first person to drive a motor car into the town of Stourbridge. This would have been prior to the repeal of the 'Red Flag Act' in 1896. When his son, John William Thomas Pearson, died in 1971 I (Stephen Pearson) recall seeing photographs of him with a man walking in front of the car with a flag. Sadly these photographs no longer exist, but others do, and can be found here and elsewhere on the site.
By the turn of the century he had returned to Stourbridge and commenced another business in his own name as E. P. Pearson. This business, originally in Worcester Street, later moved to Talbot Street, just off Market Street. Here he sold bicycles, telephones and motor cars and their components. For many decades after his death, having passed out of family ownership, the shop continued in business as 'Pearson's Cycle Depot.'
Around this time he met Ethel Rowley. She was the daughter of Richard Ghent Rowley and his wife Mary (nee Kimber). It appears she became pregnant prior to her marriage, as the eldest child, Percival Roy Pearson (usually known as 'Roy') was born just -- months after his parents marriage. It appears that Percy and Ethel married in secret in Birmingham, for surviving letters after the date of their marriage, show that Percy was writing to Ethel at her parents address as 'Miss Rowley'. Roy, their eldest child, was born in Islington, London. It seems that Ethel was visiting her married sister -- at the time, possibly with a view to keeping her pregnancy and marriage a secret. Later letters reveal that the 'secret' was of short duration and the couple were able to continue life openly as a married couple.
It is around this time that the family fortunes seem to have declined. Percy no longer owned the shop in Stourbridge and was working as a chauffeur for Owen Gibbons, a member of a local manufacturing family, who he had recently sold a motor car chassis to for £400. Ethels grandson remembers her telling him that someone in Stourbridge stopped her in the street and said "you thought you were doing well marrying one of those Pearsons with their fancy carriages, but now they're as poor as church mice."
Another son, John William Thomas Pearson, was born in 1908. By this time Percy's health was declining. Ethel told her family many years later that Percy's uncle, Dr. Alfred William Pearson, had said to her that "he should never have got married with his chest in that condition." This referred to the fact that Percy was suffering from TB. After spending some time in the Corbett Hospital, Stourbridge, Percy succumbed to the disease on ---- 1910 aged 38.
He was buried in Stourbridge Cemetery, his brother, John Reginald Francis Pearson, who died in 1914, is buried in the same grave.
Pearson/Rowley/Parrish/Batham/Gauden
Steve Pearson
PO Box 2483, Dudley, West Midlands, England, DY2 0YH
Tel: +44 (0)1384 571244 E-mail: Steve Pearson
İS Pearson 2002
