Pearse
also Mac Piarais
The surname of the first signatory of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic.
- Origin
- Leinster, Ireland
- Famous bearer
- Patrick Pearse (1879–1916), schoolmaster, poet, first signatory of the 1916 Proclamation
- Register
- Irish family
CoreHistoric reach
The seat of Pearse
Seat vacantChief
No one leads the Pearse community yet. When the movement opens, you can stand for its leadership, or help elect whoever does.
Current mission
No shared goal set yet. Once Pearse has leadership, it sets the public focus: a restoration, a gathering, a real-world project that helps its own.
The Pearse clan is being rebuilt. Join the waiting list for the movement today, and you help decide who leads it and what it does.
Help rebuild the Pearse clan →What does the Pearse name mean?
From the Old French Piers (the French form of Peter), used as a Norman first-name and frozen into surname duty in English usage by the late mediaeval period. The Pearse surname in Ireland is principally English-origin, brought to Dublin in the nineteenth century; the most famous bearer, Patrick Pearse, was the son of an English sculptor James Pearse of Birmingham (who emigrated to Dublin in the 1850s to work on the city's neo-Gothic churches) and a Dublin-Irish mother, Margaret Brady. The Gaelic patronymic Mac Piarais is Patrick Pearse's own Gaelicisation of the surname for his Irish-language writing and his publications in An Claidheamh Soluis.
The history of Pearse
The Pearse surname in Ireland traces principally to the Birmingham-Pearse family of James Pearse (1839–1900), a stone-cutter and ecclesiastical sculptor who emigrated from England to Dublin in the 1850s. The Pearse atelier on Great Brunswick Street (now Pearse Street) became the principal Dublin firm executing the stone sculpture of the city's Catholic churches of the late nineteenth-century revival.
Patrick Henry Pearse (1879–1916), James's eldest son, was a barrister, schoolmaster, poet, and the signatory of the 1916 Proclamation of the Irish Republic. He read the Proclamation from the steps of the General Post Office in Sackville Street (now O'Connell Street) at noon on Easter Monday, the twenty-fourth of April 1916. He was the President of the Provisional Government for the six days of the Rising, and on the third of May 1916 was the first of the sixteen leaders executed at Kilmainham Gaol. His younger brother William Pearse (1881–1916) was executed the following day.
Patrick Pearse founded St Enda's School (Scoil Éanna) at Cullenswood House in Rathfarnham in 1908, a bilingual Irish-English Catholic boys' school built explicitly on the principles of the Gaelic revival. The school continued in various forms until 1935 and was, by the assessment of the historians of Irish education, the most consequential single private school of the early-twentieth-century Irish revival period.
Champions of the Pearse name
The bearers whose lives are inseparable from this surname. Each has its own page — biography, achievements, geography, connection to the family.
Explore With Your Ancestors · Beta
Pick any year from 500 to 1945 and any place on earth — the Pearse country, or a shore no Pearse ever reached. The chronicler sets the scene; the deeds are yours.
Step Into History
Walk the streets and seats the Pearse name knew — a photoreal walk through time, on foot.
Step Into History · New
Georgian Dublin in the year of Rocque's great map — College Green, the Liberties' weavers, the Liffey quays and Christ Church.
Step Into History · New
The walled City of the Tribes at its Spanish-trade height — the quays, Lynch's Castle, and the fourteen merchant families.
Notable bearers of the Pearse name
- Patrick Pearse (1879–1916), schoolmaster, poet, first signatory of the 1916 Proclamation
- William Pearse (1881–1916), sculptor, executed at Kilmainham 4 May 1916
- James Pearse (1839–1900), Birmingham-born ecclesiastical sculptor