John Pearson was an attorney in Bertie County, North Carolina. In 1757 he wrote the grand jury's indictment of James Strawberry, an American Indian man, for the murder of Elizabeth Knott. In the 1760s he married Margaret Duckenfield and the couple resided at the Duckenfield Plantation in Bertie County for the remainder of their lives. Pearson died in Bertie in about 1777.