Caleb Pierson

Caleb Pierson died on March 6, 1801, and was buried in the Old Burying Ground at Caldwell. His gravestone reports his being born in 1738. The History of Essex and Hudson County has Caleb Pierson being born in 1738 in Orange, New Jersey, to Caleb Pierson and Sarah Ruth Ogden. He is a descendent of Thomas Pierson who came to Newark with a colony from Connecticut in 1666.

Caleb married Joanna Baldwin in 1762, and the couple had their first child, Sarah, in 1763. Following Sarah, the Pierson’s had four children born in Orange: John (1765), Elizabeth (1767), Jeptha (1769), and Israel (1772). At this point, the family appears to have moved to Caldwell as their following seven children were born in Caldwell: Joanna (1773), Abraham (1776), Jane (1778), Elijah (1780), who died in 1862 and is buried in the Old Burying Ground, Lydia (1782), Naomi (1783), and Rhoda, born in 1784.

Prior to the Revolutionary War, Pierson was a miller. After enlisting - possibly in the First Establishment in 1775, he served as a private in Tomas Merrell's Company, and as a private in the regular army - Colonel Martin’s Fourth Regiment in 1777 and 1778. During much of the war, Pierson was sick, probably with a long term illness.

After the war, his wife Joanna died in 1790. Caleb himself died on March 6th, 1801, at the age of 63 and is buried in the Old Burying Ground, Caldwell, New Jersey. His Great Great Grandson, David Lawrence Pierson, who was born in Orange in 1865, later became Historian General of the Sons of the American Revolution in 1917.