Samuel Pearson (1814–1884) was an English entrepreneur and founder of

Pearson plc Pearson plc is a British multinational corporation, multinational publishing and education company headquartered in London, England. It was founded as a construction business in the 1840s but switched to publishing in the 1920s.J. A. Spende ...

, a leading education (originally construction) company listed on the

London Stock Exchange London Stock Exchange (LSE) is a stock exchange in the City of London, England, United Kingdom. , the total market value of all companies trading on LSE was £3.9 trillion. Its current premises are situated in Paternoster Square close to St Pau ...

. His grandson

Weetman Pearson Weetman Dickinson Pearson, 1st Viscount Cowdray, (15 July 1856 – 1 May 1927), known as Sir Weetman Pearson, Bt between 1894 and 1910, and as Lord Cowdray between 1910 and 1917, was a British engineer, oil industrialist, benefactor and Libe ...

was ennobled, making Samuel Pearson the ancestor of

Viscount Cowdray Viscount Cowdray, of Cowdray in the County of Sussex, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1917 for the industrialist Weetman Pearson, 1st Baron Cowdray, head of the Pearson conglomerate. He had already been create ...

Career

After working as a labourer, Pearson set up his own brickmaking and contracting business in

Bradford Bradford is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Bradford district in West Yorkshire, England. The city is in the Pennines' eastern foothills on the banks of the Bradford Beck. Bradford had a population of 349,561 at the 2011 ...

in 1844. In 1856, he brought his son, George, into the business and in 1857 the business won an important contract for extension and refurbishment work on the

Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway The Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway (L&YR) was a major British railway company before the 1923 Grouping. It was incorporated in 1847 from an amalgamation of several existing railways. It was the third-largest railway system based in northern ...

. By 1861 it was employing 9 men and a farmer. He retired in 1879 and died in Scholes in 1884.

References

Sources

* 1814 births 1884 deaths

Samuel Samuel ''Šəmūʾēl'', Tiberian: ''Šămūʾēl''; ar, شموئيل or صموئيل '; el, Σαμουήλ ''Samouḗl''; la, Samūēl is a figure who, in the narratives of the Hebrew Bible, plays a key role in the transition from the bibl ...

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