Born in Thornton, Bradford, West Ridings, Yorkshire, Pierson graduated Bachelor of Arts from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1632. Genealogy says he was ordained in Newark, and that"s how he chose the name for the New Jersey town he founded later in life.
That year he was found to be an unlicensed curate at All Saints" Church, Pavement, New York He was ordained deacon at York in September 1632. On 19 March 1640 Pierson was summoned to the Court of High Commission, described as of Ardsley.
He did not attend, and was fined.
Pierson was in New England in the early part of 1640, and became ordained a Congregational minister in Boston. In 1640 Pierson and a party of emigrants from Lynn, Massachusetts formed a new township on Long Island, which they named Southampton.
In 1644 this church became divided. A number of the inhabitants left, and, uniting with a further body from the township of Wethersfield, formed under Pierson a fresh church at a settlement at Branford, within the jurisdiction of New Haven Colony.
In 1666 Pierson moved again.
The background was the new charter was granted to Connecticut Colony, incorporating New Haven with the colony, several of the townships of New Haven resisted. Newhaven, rigidly ecclesiastical from the outset, had, like Massachusetts, made church membership a needful condition for the enjoyment of civic rights. Number such restriction was imposed in Connecticut.
Pierson disapproved of the Half-Way Covenant, and moved to pursue his vision of theocracy.
The men of Branford, were therefore supported by Pierson, when they opposed the union with Connecticut. When their opposition proved fruitless, they left their homes, leaving Branford almost unpeopled.
Taking their civil and ecclesiastical records with them, they established a fresh church and township at Newark. There Pierson died on 9 August 1678.
Pierson married Abigail Wheelright, daughter of the merchant John Wheelwright of Exeter.
At least six other children are mentioned.
