Richmond Mumford Pearson
Richmond Mumford Pearson (1805-1878) was an American jurist who served as Chief Justice of the
North Carolina Supreme Court from
1858 to
1878. He was the father of Congressman
Richmond Pearson and the father-in-law of North Carolina Governor
Daniel Gould Fowle.
Pearson lived much of his life in what is now
Yadkin County, North Carolina and was a lawyer, state legislator, and Superior Court judge before being named to the state Supreme Court. He was a prominent pro-Union
Whig Party politician before the
American Civil War and a
Republican after the war.
As Chief Justice, the "domineering" Pearson helped the Court survive the Civil War and saw it through the 1868 constitutional change that made the Court justices elected by popular vote, rather than by the General Assembly (legislature).[
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