Pearson v. Pearson

By the Court: The action is ejectment, and was brought by~the appellant, Adelaide Pearson, as heir-at-law of Richard Pearson, deceased, to recover of the defendants certain premises situate in the county of Colusa. The appellant was born in the year 1850, and is a daughter of said Richard Pearson, a white man (lately deceased), by Martha Powers, a white woman, with whom he intermarried in the year. 1848, in the State of Iowa, and from whom he was divorced in the year 1854, by a valid judicial decree rendered in the courts of [123]the State of Missouri. The defendant, Laura Pearson, is a woman of African descent, and claims a distributive share in the estate of said Eichard Pearson, as being his surviving wife. The other defendants are the children of Eichard Pearson by said Laura, and were born after the alleged intermarriage between said Eichard and said Laura, presently to be mentioned, and during the subsequent cohabitation between said Eichard and said Laura in the assumed relation of husband and wife. It appears that in the year 1847, the defendant, Laura, being at the time a slave in the State of North Carolina, was purchased by said Eichard Pearson, who immediately removed her to the State of Missouri, where he held her as a slave until the year 1854, during— which year (and after the entry of the decree in the courts of that State divorcing him from Martha Powers) he removed her to the Territory of Utah, reaching the Territory in September of that year, where he remained engaged in business pursuits until the year 1855, when he removed to this State and settled in the county of Colusa, in which county he continued to reside until his death in the year 1865.

The court below found the fact to be that in the fall of the year 1854, and while residing in the Territory of Utah, the said Eichard and Laura intermarried, and thence until the death of said Eichard they lived and cohabited together as husband and wife, and that during such cohabitation there were born to them the defendants Theodore, Henry, Mary, "William Eichard, and Jefferson—the oldest of these ■ children being born in the year 1856, and the youngest shortly before the death of the said Eichard. Judgment was, thereupon, rendered to the effect that upon the death of said Eichard his estate descended to and vested in the plaintiff and defendants in all respects as though the defendant Laura had been a white woman and the lawful surviving wife of said Eichard; and from this judgment and an order subsequently entered, denying the motion of the plaintiff for a new trial, she prosecutes this appeal.