Margaret Jolly was born in Lancashire, England in August 1719 and married Baronet Nathaniel Duckenfield in London in 1745. Soon after their marriage Nathaniel left for North Carolina, where he died in 1749. Margaret Duckenfield first arrived in North Carolina in 1756 to settle her husband's sizeable estate in Bertie County. Margaret had established herself as a permanent resident in the colony by the 1760s, when she married John Pearson, a local lawyer. The Pearsons continued to reside at Margaret's plantation, called Duckenfield, in Bertie.

Despite her former husband's status as a member of the English gentry, Margaret Pearson allied herself with the Patriot cause and was one of fifty-one women who signed a resolution on non-importation which later became known as the Edenton Tea Party Resolves. Pearson remained in North Carolina throughout the American Revolution and died in Bertie County on about December 19, 1784.