Pearse

also Mac Piarais

The surname of the first signatory of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic.

Territory of Pearse

CoreHistoric reach

The seat of Pearse

Seat vacant

Chief

No chief yet. The seat awaits its first claimant, be the first to stake your name to Pearse.

Current mission

No mission proclaimed. The chief, once seated, sets the clan’s public focus, a campaign, a contest, a piece of restoration, a year of remembrance.

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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.

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

Stories of Pearse

The Proclamation on the GPO steps
1916
At twelve noon on Easter Monday, the twenty-fourth of April 1916, on the granite steps in front of the General Post Office in Sackville Street, Dublin, Patrick Henry Pearse, thirty-six years old, schoolmaster of St Enda's and Commandant-General of the Army of the Irish Republic, read aloud, in English, the *Proclamation of the Irish Republic*. The Proclamation, drafted by Pearse over the previous fortnight and revised in committee at Liberty Hall on the previous Saturday, was a five-paragraph declaration that an Irish Republic had been established and that the seven signatories (Thomas Clarke, Seán MacDiarmada, Patrick Pearse, James Connolly, Thomas MacDonagh, Éamonn Ceannt, Joseph Mary Plunkett) were the Provisional Government. The reading took about three minutes. The crowd, by the tradition of the witnesses, was thin: perhaps a hundred and fifty Dubliners walked past on the way to the Easter Monday races at Fairyhouse, most of them not understanding what was happening. Pearse himself signed the indictment of his own life with the act. He was shot at Kilmainham Gaol nine days later, on the third of May 1916.
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Frequently asked

What does the surname Pearse mean?

Where does the Pearse family come from?

The Pearse family was historically based in Leinster in Ireland, in particular Dublin.

Who are some famous Pearses?

Notable bearers of the Pearse name include Patrick Pearse (1879–1916), schoolmaster, poet, first signatory of the 1916 Proclamation, William Pearse (1881–1916), sculptor, executed at Kilmainham 4 May 1916 and James Pearse (1839–1900), Birmingham-born ecclesiastical sculptor.

Is Mac Piarais the same family as Pearse?

Yes. Mac Piarais is historical spelling variants of the Pearse name. They share the same lineage and clan affiliation.