| Walter Beverly Pearson | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1862 Madison, Wisconsin |
| Died | 1917 Chicago, Illinois |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | President of Standard Screw Company |
| Children | Frederick Beverly Pearson, Beatrice Pearson |
| Parents | Anna Wayles Hemings Jefferson, Albert Pearson |
| Relatives | John Wayles, Martha Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings, Madison Hemings, Eston Hemings, Frederick Madison Roberts, John Wayles Jefferson, Mary Hemings, John Hemings, James Hemings, Betty Hemings |
Walter Beverly Pearson (1862 - May 19, 1917) was an American industrialist and president of the Standard Screw Company. As of 2008, it is still in operation as Stanadyne Automotive.[1][2]
He is believed to have been an unacknowledged great-grandson of President Thomas Jefferson, as he was descended from the slave Sally Hemings and their son Eston Hemings.[3]
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Pearson's mother was Anna Wayles Hemings Jefferson, the only surviving daughter of Eston Hemings and Julia Ann Isaacs. His father was Captain Albert Pearson, a white carpenter from Madison, Wisconsin, who served in the Union Army during the Civil War. Eston, who was seven-eighths European in ancestry and legally white under Virginia law, and Julia Ann had moved their family from Ohio to Madison in 1852 for added security after passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Although all their family was free, slave catchers sometimes enslaved free blacks in those years.[4]
They changed their surname to Jefferson and entered the white community.[4] All their descendants have identified as white.
Pearson operated a small Chicago manufacturing company, which in 1900 combined with several other companies to form Standard Screw. He was the company's "first outstanding leader," the driving force behind its initial success in 1904 until his death in 1917.[5]
Walter Pearson married Helen xxx. They had a son Frederick Beverly and daughter Beatrice Pearson.
At his death in 1917, Pearson left an estate valued at $2,000,000. The executors of his will were his wife, Helen, and his cousin Carl Jefferson, the son of his mother's brother Beverly. Pearson left a $50,000 annuity to his wife, $12,000 annuity to his daughter Beatrice and son Frederick, and a $50,000 bequest to his cousin Dr. Frederick Jefferson.[6]
Pearson's son Frederick was to receive the bulk of the Pearson fortune on his 35th birthday, but he died at age 30 in 1926 in a fire. He burned to death in his apartment at the Claridge Hotel in Chicago after falling asleep with a lit cigarette.[7]
Pearson has no known descendants.
In 1974 the historian Fawn McKay Brodie published a biography of Thomas Jefferson in which she explored the evidence related to his alleged relationship with Sally Hemings. Her book Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History (1974) was criticized by historians for her psychological approach, and they ignored her evidence related to the relationship. After it was published, descendants of the Eston Hemings Jefferson family contacted her. Knowledge of the family connection to Thomas Jefferson had been lost in the 1940s, as the family decided not to pass on the story, for fear their children would face racial discrimination.[3]
In 1976 the author published an article about the grandchildren of Sally Hemings' and Thomas Jefferson, covering the Pearson family.[3] A 1998 DNA study found that a male descendant of Eston Hemings matched the Y-chromosome of the Jefferson male line.[8][9] Most historians now accept that Jeffersonian scholarship has changed and acknowledge that the president and Hemings had a 39-year, stable relationship and six children. As the Monticello Website says:
"Through his celebrity as the eloquent spokesman for liberty and equality as well as the ancestor of people living on both sides of the color line, Jefferson has left a unique legacy for descendants of Monticello's enslaved people as well as for all Americans."[10]