Benjamin Rush Pearson
Nobodiness is a malady that’s hard to treat
So, Mama give me a name with which to compete
With the likes of my brothers Augustus and Fletcher,
Lewis and Charles Lafayette
James Madison’s taken, what’s left?
Daddy went to the doctor and the doctor said,
I am no magician, just a practical man
Benjamin Rush* (see below) is a must for a boy
Who wants to help the sick and the lame
So, it was I became, Benjamin Rush Pearson
And when I grew up, doctor and physician
Benjamin Rush Pearson, M.D.
Dr. Benjamin Rush Pearson (1849 – 1906), son of James Madison Pearson and Elizabeth Anne Brown, father of Annie E. Pearson, Coleman Ferrell Pearson, and James Madison Pearson, my grandfather. Virginia Military Academy, class of 1871, graduate of Alabama Medical College, President of the Montgomery Medical Society; he who died too young.
Named for Dr. Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence, Surgeon General of the Continental Army, physician, politician, opposer of slavery, organizer of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage, advocate of free public education and founder of Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, author of Medical Inquiries and Observations upon the Diseases of the Mind, America’s first textbook on psychiatry.
James Madison Pearson, Sr had eleven children by two wives. Of those who survived childhood, four became doctors and two lawyers; and one, James Madison Pearson, Jr., was 18 when the Civil War began. He left school and enlisted in the Confederate ranks. Younger brother Benjamin Rush was sixteen when the war ended. The paterfamilias grew cotton and corn on the largest farm in Tallapoosa County, Alabama.
Read more about Dr. Benjamin Rush Pearson from Northern Alabama: Historical and Biographical..., page 163
Family Pearson 