I was born on the 28TH January 1955 in the Carleton Nursing Home in Portadown in the County Of Armagh, Northern Ireland. The Rock n’ Roll era, the Swinging Fifties. Christened Herbert Melvyn Pearson after an Uncle on my dad’s side who had died at 18 years old Uncle Herbie and Melvyn after an American long lost rellie on my mum’s side, a long storey I may return to later.
The Carleton Home being the main production output for infants in the fifties for those in the North Armagh district. My dad was Charles (Charlie) Pearson the third oldest of a family of nine children, seven boys and two girls. No television in those days so entertainment and distraction is self-evident.
My Family ‘‘The Pearsons’’ had originally been from the Kilmore, Richhill and Ballyhegan districts of Armagh. Well at least in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s. My particular branch had sailed off to New Zealand in the mid 1800’s in search of fame and fortune, where there was much matchmaking and marrying. A lot of this detail is obviously lost with time, but I have researched a wee bit and have included this knowledge, or at least the facts to the best of my knowledge in this account according to Melvyn.
My particular branch of the Family Tree decided that they missed the precipitation, wind, Guinness and the ‘craic’ returning to the Kilmore Area, County Armagh in the late 1890’s, but more of that later.
My mother, Betsy Armstrong, the apple of my father’s eye was born and reared in the town land of Derryallen on the Markethill Road bound for Clare, about a mile from Tandragee. Mum had three sisters one brother and a half brother, a small set-up in those days. It often amazes me that both my granddads fought in the First Great War 1914 to 1918 and still had time, particularly John James (Jack) Pearson to rear large families and all exist and survive in exceptionally diminutive houses made for what nowadays a bachelor would find restrictive to say the least. This feat says a lot for women’s stance behind their husbands in those dark gloomy days of world War One and the depressive years that followed.
Charles my dad, or Charlie as his close friends and family affectionately knew him, even Charlie to his mother, hailed from ‘’The Far Hill’ proper name Cochrane’s Hill in Laurelvale, which was a little row of purpose built two storey houses, with one small living room three stunted bedrooms and a kitchen if you could call it that, oh and a small front hall. They were planned to lodge the labour-force of the local linen mill, Sinton’s, that the houses overlooked. They were not conceived to nurture the nine blond tearaways that was the Pearson brood of John James (Jack) and Harriet (nee Speers) Pearson, my Grandparents on my father’s side.
Harriet had moved from somewhere near Bill Jack Gillespie’s Farm at Lisavague, which I am led to believe was a kind of outhouse come cow byre that she had rented, from a sympathetic farmer. Somewhere behind old Ned Heathwood’s shop according to Uncle Isaac Abbott Pearson, ‘’Wee Icky’’ as he was affectionately calledand I haste to mention one of the main sources of the early morsels enclosed in this Pearson narrative. Harriet had given Jack an ultimatum, in that he could either accompany her to this domicile to the rear of Heathwoods, or stay with his mother Ellen, Harriet had by this point three offspring, James junior, Isaac Abbott and my dad Charles.
The background to Harriet’s drastic strategy was that Jack’s mother Ellen fresh from far off shores, New Zealand was a devout, staunch and dedicated Quakerand notwithstanding this Great Grandpa James had taken a jaundiced eye to the dreaded porter or drink to those unacquainted with the term porter and are members of the temperance social order. This affliction was much to Great Gran Ellen’s horror and aversion. Harriet couldn’t stick the in-laws Religious Non religious ambience and so oft she went to the nearest ‘cow byre’ until a house became available on the ‘’Far Hill’’ or Cochrane’s Hill as pictured above. The Far Hill today is part of a housing development (Old Mill Manor, aptly named) of Bobby Uprichard’s Headstone Works and adjacent to Wilfie McClelland’s farm. It is still being developed, as I pen this paragraph.
While I am expressing my forbearer reminiscences and related accounts I will tell you what I grasp of my ancestors which has been gathered from a mixture of relatives, kith and kin, and dear friends. Internet swot, memory, musings of stories overheard when I was a child from family members and various documents I have came across or been given. My appreciation is also extended to Pat Churchill a New Zealander who shares the Pearson name years back and has given me many snippets of the past in documentary form.
the apple of my father’s eye was born and reared in the town land of Derryallen on the Markethill Road bound for Clare, about a mile from Tandragee. Mum had three sisters one brother and a half brother, a small set-up in those days. It often amazes me that both my granddads fought in the First Great War 1914 to 1918 and still had time, particularly 
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