Restrictions to Access

No restrictions. Open for research.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the Richmond Mumford Pearson Papers #584, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Received from Mrs. Richmond M. Pearson, Marjorie Pearson, and the North Carolina Historical Society.

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

Processed by: Suzanne Ruffing, February 1996

Encoded by: ByteManagers Inc., 2008

Updated by: Kathryn Michaelis, December 2009

This collection was processed with support from the Randleigh Foundation Trust.

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• Families--North Carolina--Social life and customs.
• Fowle, Daniel G. (Daniel Gould), 1831-1891.
• Mentally ill--Care--North Carolina--History--19th century.
• North Carolina--Politics and government.
• Pearson family.
• Pearson, Mary McDowell Bynum, fl. 1856-1874.
• Pearson, Richmond Mumford, 1805-1878.
• Plantation life--North Carolina.
• Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865-1877)--North Carolina.

• Richmond Pearson Papers (#3647).

Richmond Mumford Pearson, who lived successively in Rowan, Davie, and Surry (later Yadkin) counties, N.C., was a lawyer; legislator; Superior and Supreme Court judge, chief justice of North Carolina, 1858-1878; noted teacher of law; unionist Whig; and, after the Civil War, Republican.

Papers include correspondence with physicians and others about the mental illness of Richmond Mumford Pearson's first wife; with his brothers, sisters, and children about family and plantation life; with his second wife, Mary (McDowell) Bynum Pearson; and with his son-in-law, Daniel Gould Fowle, lawyer of Raleigh, N.C., later governor of North Carolina. Also included are scattered papers relating to personal finances, property, and estate settlements, and a few items pertaining to judicial and political affairs, several of them during the Civil War and Reconstruction periods.