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NAVIGATION
Michigan
Histories
Kalamazoo County
Biographies
Online Biographies
Illinois
Histories
Also see [Railway Officials in America 1906]
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Among the successful and well-to-do farmers of Climax township is Parvis C. Pearce, who was born in the town
of Geneseo, Livingston Co., N. Y., May 23, 1817. When thirteen years old his family moved into Niagara Co., N.
Y., where he grew to manhood, receiving but a limited education. Mr. Pearce can hardly remember when he was not
his own master. At an early age he had to work at whatever he could get to do, his earnings helping to support
his moiher and grandmother, clearing land, splitting rails, and logging, when other farmers' boys of his age were
either in school or doing the light work on the farm. In 1842 he married, after which he commenced for himself.
He worked by the month and day, and also worked land on shares. In 1848 he determined to emigrate to Michigan,
where land was rich and cheap. He came with his wife and two children to Climax, and worked by the month, while
his wife worked for her own and her children's board. The following winter he took up an eighty acre lot, paying
one quarter of the price down. He then worked a farm in Charleston, and in the following year built a small log
house, doing the work, save making the doors, himself. He commenced improving his land summers, and in the winter
split rails, selling them for one dollar per hundred. In this way hunger was kept at a distance, and year by year
saw new improvements. To the farm of eighty acres he has added from time to time, until he owns three hundred and
twenty-seven acres of land, two hundred improved, mostly by himself, while the log house and barns have been replaced
by a fine house and outbuildings, together with orchards and all that goes to make a fine farm. He has also helped
his children in life. In politics Mr. Pearce is a Republican. He married, Sept. 28, 1842, Miss Eliza Kelly, daughter
of Hugh and Anne (Logan) Kelly, who was born Dec. 12, 1823, in Geneseo, N. Y. There have been born to them ten
children, as follows: Jane, born Oct. 13, 1843; Lucy, July 15, 1846; Jennings, April 10, 1849; Sayda, May 16,1851;
Perry, May 29, 1854; Ida, April 18,1857, died Aug. 28, 1859; Nora, March 8,1860, died March 31,1860; Nora, July
28, 1861, died in infancy; Abraham L., Dec. 13, 1864; and Dolly, June 28, 1866.
FROM:
History of Kalamazoo County, Michigan
With Illistrations and Biographical Sketches
of its Men and Pioneers.
Everts & Abbott., Philadelphia 1880
Press of J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia.
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