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CoUection: Isaac E. PEARCE (1839-1863)
Letters, 1857-1862
P.C
1804.1
Physical Description: 29 Items: 21 letters; 6 envelopes; 1 MS poem; and
1 photograph (unidentified woman)
Acquisition: Gift of D. Scott Wiggins, Glen Allen, Virginia, March 6, 1992.
Description: Captain Isaac E. Pearce was the son of Robert and Emily (Rogers)
Pearce. His father appears to have been from Suffolk, Virginia, and his
mother was from Gates County, North Carolina. Pearce's parents were
married in May, 1838, and he was born some months later. His sister, Ann
Maria R. Pearce, was born six years afterward. Since Captain Pearce's
letters speak of a brother in Suffolk, Va. , called Dick, later referred to
as Richard and described as being in Ferdinands, Florida, in February, 1860,
one assumes Captain Pearce and his sister had a half-brother bom of an
earlier marriage. Sometime after 1844 Robert Pearce died, and Emily moved
with her two children back into the Gates County household of her mother,
Elizabeth Rogers, next door to the family of James Arline. In February,
1850, Arline's wife Margaret died in childbed, and on February 12, 1851,
James Arline and Emily (Rogers) Pearce married. Arline, then, in 1851,
became guardian for Isaac E. and Ann Maria R. Pearce. In the letters,
Arline appears as "Pa" and as "your guardian" (Ann Maria remaining under
Arline's guardianship through the year 1862). The "Grandma" and "Uncle Robert"
referred to in the letters are Elizabeth Rogers and Robert Rogers, mother
and brother respectively of Emily (Rogers) Pearce Arline.
-Isaac E. Pearce received his share of his father's estate in 1857,
and by. 1858 he was in Gatesville, N.C., where he purchased a one-third
share valued at $6000 in a local mercantile concern thenceforth known as
Bond, Riddick, and Pearce. Upon the outbreak of war in 1861, Pearce
volunteered with his company, the Gates Guards, and served with the company
in the 5th Regiment, North Carolina Troops. . He entered with the rank of •
lieutenant and was promoted to a captaincy effective May 5, 1862. At the
end of October, 1862, Pearce returned home on a brief convalescent leave.
Shortly after his return to the regiment, Pearce died of smallpox at Guinea
Station, Virginia, on January 18, 1863.
