Mr. Pearsall was born in New York City, October 17, 1839, and is the son of Silas Pearsall and Ellen, daughter of Alonzo Parker. His father was also born in New York City, while the ancestral line on the paternal side was long established in America. Ellen Parker was born in Waterford, Ireland. Having been educated in the New York public schools, about 1856 Mr. Pearsall entered the employ of James V. Freeman in the wholesale butter trade at 101 Front Street, New York City. Afterward he was with W. H. Phillips, his successor, with whom he remained for nearly eight years. He then removed to Hempstead, Long Island, where for something more than two years he was engaged in the retail grocery business. Returning to New York City, the next ten years were also spent in the wholesale butter trade in the employ of S. W. & J. I. Hoyt. During the subsequent two years he engaged in the same line on his own account.

Mr. Pearsall then formed a connection which eventually led to his present business. He entered the employ of the Domestic Sewing Machine Cornpany in New York, and remained with them for eighteen years, until the company failed. During the last seven years of the eighteen he had been manager of the pattern department of this concern, and he recognized the existence of needs in the pattern trade which no one had undertaken to meet. Thus having severed his connection with the Domestic Sewing Machine Company, in April, 1894, he organized and secured the incorporation of the New Idea Pattern Company, of which lie is President and chief owner. This business has been recently described as follows:

When the New Idea Pattern Company was started, about six years ago, it had practically no cash capital, but what was even more valuable than a bank account was Mr. Pearsall's experience in the pattern business, his acquaintance and good standing among New York houses, and, most important of all, a plan for selling patterns that proved an instantaneous success. This plan or idea is threefold, or has three salient features, which are, briefly: (1) a uniform price, (2) the requirement of no contract, and (3) no minimum limit to the amount of goods to be purchased by a retailer.

"Working on these principles and other innovations to the pattern trade, the upbuilding of the company's business has been of the record-breaking order. Five times in these years it has been necessary to move the head office in New York into larger quarters. Now it has fifty feet frontage on Broadway, with a depth of two hundred feet, and has over one hundred people on its pay roll. There are now over 3,000 agencies established among retail merchants, and distributing offices are located in Chicago, Toronto, and seven other large cities, Chicago being the principal distributing point in the West. The company is incorporated and the stockholders, besides Mr. Pearsall, are his three sons and a son-in-law."