If all goes as planned, within the next several months, Plot 187 will have a special Confederate headstone erected by the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, said Charles “Mike” Anderson. It will read “John T. Pearce, July 12, 1839–September 10, 1910.”

John T. Pearce was the great-great-great-uncle of Mr Anderson, who was raised in Woodbury and Southbury and now lives in Prospect. Mr Pearce was also the founder and first editor of The Newtown Bee, a fact Mr Anderson stumbled upon during his 22 years of researching his family history.

“Growing up in the area, I was familiar with The Bee, and had read it,” said Mr Anderson, Thursday, May 26. “But I was surprised when I came across the information that he had started The Bee,” he said.

He began looking into the genealogy of his family after his great-great-great-grandmother Sarah Pearce Rockwell, the sister of John T. Pearce, was featured in a book, Our Eldest and Last Civil War Nurses, by Jay Hoar. Mrs Rockwell, who died at the age of 109, in 1953, had been interviewed by The Danbury News Times as she reached her 99th birthday, for her service as a nurse during the Civil War, Mr Anderson said, and that had attracted the attention of the writer.

“I guess that piqued my interest,” Mr Anderson said, and he began compiling a history of his family. “Much of the information came from interviews my great-great-great-grandmother gave to reporters of The Danbury News-Times, and also to her granddaughter, my great-grandmother, Leita Clark Hicks*,” he said, as well as by delving into historical documents at the Connecticut State Library in Hartford, and local sources in Bethel.

 Then in 1996, his grandfather, from Bethel, died and Mr Anderson attended the funeral. “I had to look for the family grave plot in St Mary’s Cemetery,” Mr Anderson said, and when he located it, he noticed that his great-uncle’s plot there did not commemorate the man as a war veteran, which he knew he was, and pursued having a special footstone placed there.

He knew by then that John T. Pearce had also lived in Bethel, and that he had been a Confederate soldier. It occurred to him that maybe this grave also was not commemorated properly. That was when he began to seek out the actual burying place of his great-great-great-uncle, to see if he had a headstone honoring him as a veteran. Researching the Hale Collection in Bethel, a record of all headstones in Connecticut, Mr Anderson found records indicating that John T. Pearce, his wife, Caroline, a son, and his father were buried in Bethel’s Center Cemetery, off of South Street. Armed with a map of the cemetery, and with the assistance of cemetery sexton John Main, he discovered the headstones for his great-great-great-great-grandfather, Samuel B. Pearce, and John and Caroline’s son, Samuel H. Pearce. Two other unmarked graves were situated next to the site of Samuel B. Pearce. “I knew that Caroline had died before John, so she was probably buried in the next grave, near Samuel B. Pearce. That meant that John T. Pearce was buried in the next grave over.”

As he worked to verify his ancestor’s military history, he kept finding references to John T. Pearce as an editor. It took a bit more sleuthing, but eventually he turned up the information that named John T. Pearce as the editor of the Bethel Ledger, and also of The Newtown Bee. “Bit by bit, I came across things related to him, and I wanted to share it,” Mr Anderson said.

Filling In The Blanks

Little is known about The Newtown Bee’s first owner and editor, said Newtown Town Historian Dan Cruson, outside of what he wrote briefly about in his book, A Mosaic of Newtown History and what appeared in the 100th and 120th Anniversary editions of the local paper.

“The Newtown Bee was the creation of John T. Pearce, a man some described as eccentric, whose nose for news far outperformed his other senses — especially his business sense,” begins the lead article in the June 27, 1997, issue of The Newtown Bee. “Mr Pearce set up shop above Sanford and Hawley’s store on Main Street in 1877. [It is notable that, according to Mr Anderson, John T. Pearce’s daughter, Harriet, was married to Howard Sanford of Newtown**; and that one of Mr Pearce’s sons, Marcus C. Hawley Pearce, bore the same name as Newtown benefactress Mary E. Hawley’s father. That son, attempted suicide in 1927. Another son, Samuel H. Pearce, unable to hold a job or support them, was separated from his wife and children. After a disappearance of five years, in September of 1927, Samuel reappeared on the Bethel scene, only to commit suicide in a White Street store while helping out, slitting his own throat — just a few months after his brother’s attempt at ending his life. The Pearces also had another son, George Edwards D. Pearce.] On June 28 of 1877, the first small newspaper bearing the banner ‘The Bee’ was circulated hand-to-hand around Newtown. Subscriptions were $1 a year, and ads sold for 75-cents an inch.”

The article goes on to say, “Mr Pearce’s enthusiasm for publishing a local paper was erratic. He would suspend an issue whenever he felt like it, and sometimes he would turn all his duties over to someone else and disappear, only to reappear and take them all back… By 1880, The Bee’s viability was teetering on the brink. All The Bee’s goods and chattels were heavily mortgaged to the village merchant Henry Sanford… His best option seemed to be to sell out.” It was in 1880 that Reuben Hazen Smith purchased The Newtown Bee, “saving Mr Pearce from his inevitable failure.”

Mr Anderson said that while he concurs with write-ups in The Newtown Bee that label his great-great-great-Uncle John “a bit of an eccentric,” writings in the June 17, 1879 Bethel Ledger, of which it appears Mr Pearce edited concurrently with The Newtown Bee, find area newspapers filled with praise for the Ledger/Bee editor.

“The Bethel ‘Press,’ after an eventful two or three years under the editorial and proprietorial management of Mr A.A. Bensel has ceased to exist pro tem. We understand however that Mr J.T. Pearce, the persevering and energetic editor of The Newtown ‘Bee’ has purchased the stock, fixtures and good will of the paper and will commence its reissue next week.” —Bethel Correspondent Republican Standard.

From the Bridgeport Sun: “Mr Pearce, proprietor of The Newtown ‘Bee’ has purchased two more papers, the Bethel ‘Press’ and Georgetown ‘Star’ and by consolidating the two under the title, ‘Bethel Ledger,’ has produced a very attractive eight-page journal… Mr Pearce shows zest, push and dedicated ability in the conduct of the ‘Bee’ and we congratulate Bethelians and Georgetownites upon the new departure.”

The Danbury Republican had this to say about the newly acquired paper: “The first number of the Bethel Ledger comes to us bright and newsy. It is in quarto form, and is edited by John T. Pearce of the Newtown ‘Bee’. Pearce knows how to manage a paper…”

The exact date of John T. Pearce’s entry into the newspaper business is not information he has come across, Mr Anderson said, and military records for John T. Pearce are a source of some confusion as to when Mr Pearce first came to New England, when compared to what his great-great-great- grandmother recalled.

A Confederate Soldier

Records in The 15th Virginia Infantry by Louis H. Manarin, place John T. Pearce in the army of the Confederates until 1862, when he is discharged for an unidentified illness. It then appears that he returns to the infantry in 1864, and possibly deserts. He is listed as having taken the Oath of Allegiance to the Union in 1865, and whether serving or in prison, it is unclear, but is listed as being in Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia after that.

However, all other documents that Mr Anderson came across when researching Mr Pearce indicate that the Confederate soldier was able to run the blockade at Norfolk, Va., and settled in 1862 in Bethel. Taken from an earlier interview, in which Mrs Rockwell discussed her family’s removal from post-Civil War Richmond, her obituary of November 24, 1953. in the Danbury News Times states: “Mrs Rockwell’s brother, John, who had been discharged from the Confederate Army because of illness, managed to beak through the Union blockade in 1861 and found work as a hatter in Bethel. He sent for the other members of the family and in 1869, after four heartbreaking years following the close of the war, they left their Virginia home forever.”

“From the research I’ve done, the Pearce family left relatives in Norfolk, Richmond, and Lynchburg, Virginia,” added Mr Anderson. “For example, [John’s] sister’s wedding announcement in 1872 has a note to copy the story to these cities; also, he had a daughter die at the age of 2, in 1869, and that announcement was also copied to those cities. I found that in 1862 he found work as a hatter, which didn’t surprise me. He came from a family of hatters, and obviously, at that time in Richmond, with the war closing in, there was little call for hatters,” Mr Anderson said.

It may be that he was editor or assistant editor of the Bethel Press, under Mr Bensel, said Mr Anderson, but he cannot verify that. It would appear that The Newtown Bee was his initial foray into publishing.

The January 21, 1880, issue of the Bethel Ledger carries a notice that Mr Pearce “Concludes to give up the business and go back to take charge of The Newtown Bee,” leaving one to wonder who was in charge of The Bee up till then, for how long, and was that the reason the paper began to founder.

Somewhere between the time of that announcement and publication of the first Newtown Bee under the direction of the Smith family, in April of 1881, Mr Pearce wavered as to his commitment to the Newtown newspaper. According to Mr Cruson, Newtown land records show conveyance transactions for The Newtown Bee four times in 1880.

Even with the final sale of The Newtown Bee to Reuben Hazen Smith, John T. Pearce was not finished, it seems, with newspaper life. Mr Anderson’s research found in an 1882 issue of the Bethel Ledger, a note that welcomes the former editor back to that paper.

John T. Pearce, born July 12, 1839, died September 10, 1910, of heart disease, in Danbury Hospital. Adding to the mystery of the “eccentric” Newtown Bee founder is his obituary, published in the September 25, 1910, Danbury News Times: “Mr Pearce was a hat finisher and was employed at that trade until he retired about fifteen years ago [1895] by reason of ill health. He was a member of the Bethel Hat Finishers’ Union, and for many years was active in trade affairs.*** He was a Mason, a member of Eureka Lodge, of Bethel, and was a member of the Church of Christ in this city. Mr Pearce possessed many friends in this city and in Bethel, to whom the news of his death was the cause of sincere regret.”

A list of survivors follows, with the note that “The arrangements for the funeral have not been completed.” The glaring omission is that of Mr Pearce’s involvement in the print industry. Subsequent issues of the News Times, September 25, 26, and 27, as well, make mention only of the arrangements and graveside ceremony.

An Unmarked Grave

Whatever marker, if any, was set in place at that time has disappeared long ago. Due to Mr Anderson’s diligence, however, the gravesite of The Newtown Bee founder will once again be identified, although the special style for a Civil War Confederate allows only for a limited inscription. The Southern Cross of Honor is automatically inscribed at the top. The name is arched, followed by abbreviated military organization, and dates of birth and death. No additional items can be inscribed.

As a Vietnam veteran, said Mr Anderson, his original intention was simply to see that his family members’ gravesites were honored through the placement of military commemorative headstones. Discovering his great-great-great-uncle’s connection to a newspaper he grew up reading was just a bonus, he said, and one that he hopes will shed some light on the life of The Newtown Bee’s founder, John T. Pearce.

(*Curiously, there is a thin link between the founder of The Newtown Bee and the current editor, Curtiss Clark. Clark was not an uncommon name in early New England, and “Almost everyone living in New England before the middle of the 19th Century was related to each other,” quipped Newtown Bee editor, Curtiss Clark; however, it is intriguing to find that the Clark family to whom Mr Anderson, a descendent of The Bee’s founder, is related, makes him a very distant cousin, many times removed, of today’s Newtown Bee editor. Hannah Webb Clark, married to Samuel Clark, was Mr Anderson’s great-great-great-grandmother. Samuel Clark’s maternal grandmother was Polly Northrup, the great-great-great-granddaughter of Joseph Northrup, whose great-granddaughter married Caleb Camp. Their granddaughter, Hannah Nettleton, married Isaac Clark, who was the great-grandfather of Artison Clark — the great-grandfather of today’s Bee editor.

** The genealogy section of E.L. Johnson’s Newtown 1705–1918 does not list a Howard Sanford or a Harriet Pearce Sanford in the family history of the Newtown Sanfords.

*** An ad taken out in the December 10, 1879, Bethel Ledger by John T. Pearce is for the “CASH STORE, Bethel, Conn., Gents’ Furnishing Goods, Crockery, Lamps, Men’s and Boys’ Caps, Umbrellas, &c At Pearce’s Fisher’s Building. I offer to the citizens of Bethel, Newtown, and vicinity extra inducremem’s(sic) by selling CHEAP, FOR CASH.”)