He first came to what was then the Wisconsin Territory in 1839, returned to Connecticut, came back and settled near Merton in Waukesha County.
He returned to Connecticut once more, where he married Sarah Trowbridge (a fellow native of Ashford), and the two of them came to Wisconsin in 1844 to stay on the farm he had established in Lisbon.
Before Wisconsin had become a state, on 14 August 1846, a convention of the newly organized Liberty Party was held in Prairieville.
Pearl was elected to a one-year term in the Assembly's 4th Waukesha County district (the Towns of Brookfield, Lisbon, Menomonee and Pewaukee[2]) in 1852 as a Free Soil candidate, after a redistricting had cost the county one of its Assembly seats.
In later years Pearl identified with the Republican Party which carried on the ideals of the Liberty and Free Soil parties; and served as a justice of the peace in Lisbon.