Samuel Stillman Pierce (1807–1880) was a grocer in
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
,
, who established the S.S. Pierce company in 1831.
Biography
Samuel Stillman Pierce was born in Cedar Grove,
Dorchester, in 1807. In 1836, he married Ellen Maria Wallis. They had eight children. The family lived in the
South End and Dorchester. He died in Boston 12 October 1880.
S.S. Pierce & Co.
In 1831, Pierce and his partner, Eldad Worcester, "started out by wholesaling provisions to the ships that crowded what was then a very busy
Boston Harbor
Boston Harbor is a natural harbor and estuary of Massachusetts Bay, and is located adjacent to the city of Boston, Massachusetts. It is home to the Port of Boston, a major shipping facility in the northeastern United States.
History
Since ...
, but soon enough Pierce was bartering with ship captains, often exchanging his provisions for the delicacies they would bring to Boston from faraway ports.' Pierce said, "I may not make money, but I shall make a reputation."
The grocery business thrived, due in part to "celebrity customers ...
John Quincy Adams
John Quincy Adams (; July 11, 1767 – February 23, 1848) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, and diarist who served as the sixth president of the United States, from 1825 to 1829. He previously served as the eighth United States S ...
,
Daniel Webster
Daniel Webster (January 18, 1782 – October 24, 1852) was an American lawyer and statesman who represented New Hampshire and Massachusetts in the U.S. Congress and served as the U.S. Secretary of State under Presidents William Henry Harrison, ...
,"
and
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (; August 29, 1809 – October 7, 1894) was an American physician, poet, and polymath based in Boston. Grouped among the fireside poets, he was acclaimed by his peers as one of the best writers of the day. His most fa ...
who said: "I was brought up on S.S. Pierce's groceries and I don't dare change."
The 1886 catalog for ''S.S. Pierce & Co., Importers and Grocers'' lists myriad items for sale in its Grocery, Wine, Cigar, and Perfumery Departments: gelatine;
isinglass
Isinglass () is a substance obtained from the dried swim bladders of fish. It is a form of collagen used mainly for the clarification or fining of some beer and wine. It can also be cooked into a paste for specialised gluing purposes.
The E ...
; chutneys; French vegetables in glass jars; Alghieri's soups; Wiesbaden goods; wines; Russian cigarettes; Egyptian cigarettes; quadruple essences; tooth brushes; soaps assorted; inexhaustible salts; and much more.
In 1887, the company moved from the corner of
Tremont and Court Streets to
Copley Square
Copley Square , named for painter John Singleton Copley, is a public square in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood, bounded by Boylston Street, Clarendon Street, St. James Avenue, and Dartmouth Street. Prior to 1883 it was known as Art Square due to it ...
, into a new building designed by architect S. Edwin Tobey. Architecture critic
Robert Campbell has observed of the building: "It's no masterpiece of architecture, but it's great urban design. A heap of dark Romanesque masonry, it anchored a corner of Copley Square as solidly as a mountain." The building was demolished in 1958.
In 1892, S.S. Pierce, under Wallace Pierce, the son of the founder, purchased the former Coolidge & Brother store, a two-story wooden building in
Coolidge Corner
Coolidge Corner is a neighborhood of Brookline, Massachusetts, centered on the intersection of Beacon Street and Harvard Street. The neighborhood takes its name from the Coolidge & Brother general store that opened in 1857 at that intersecti ...
,
Brookline
Brookline may refer to:
Places in the United States
* Brookline, Massachusetts, a town near Boston
* Brookline, Missouri
* Brookline, New Hampshire
* Brookline (Pittsburgh), a neighborhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
* Brookline, Vermont
See ...
that had been on the site since 1857 and opened a branch at that location. Six years later, the company built a new Tudor-style building with a clock tower featuring an open deck. The tower was damaged in a storm in 1948 and replaced with a new tower, minus the open deck. The building still stands as a historically significant landmark today.
In addition to a wide variety of goods for sale, the company provided notable customer service.
"The company hired horse-drawn sleighs to deliver groceries when snowstorms closed roads to auto traffic, and maintained a well-drilled corps of salesmen who would phone housewives at appointed hours. They not only suggested menus but answered such arcane questions as how to cook an ostrich egg (boil it) or how to extract the flavor from a 6-in. vanilla bean (bury a 1-in. cutting from the bean for a month in a pound of sugar). Once when a hostess in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., complained that a case of turtle soup had not arrived, a Pierce salesman took an overnight train to deliver it in person — just in time for her party."
In 1972, the S.S. Pierce company was sold to
Seneca Foods
Seneca Foods Corporation is an American food processor and distributor headquartered in Marion, New York, USA. Seneca Foods Corporation conducts its business almost entirely in food packaging, which contributed to about 98% of the company's fisc ...
Corp., of New York.
which adopted the name S.S. Pierce until the 1980s.
Images
Image:SSPierce CourtSt BostonDirectory 1852.png, 1852 advertisement for Samuel S. Pierce
Image:SSPierce Boston Bacon1892.png, S.S. Pierce building, Copley Square, 1892
Image:2387518985 SSPierce CopleySq2.jpg, SS Pierce & Co., Copley Square, Boston, 1889
Image:2387561281 SSPierce Boston.jpg, SS Pierce & Co., Copley Square, Boston, 1888
Image:Peirce Boston BlueBook1905.png, 1905 advertisement for S.S. Peirce & Co.
Further reading
*
References
External links
* Harvard Business School 1886 S.S.Pierc
* Dorchester Book. Illustrated. Boston, 1899
* Copley 30-Aug-188
* Dartmouth Street 1954-195
* Copley Square 1954-195
* Envelope 7-1-184
* New York Historical Society
Tin Canfrom S.S. Pierce
* Anthony Sammarco, “S. S. Pierce: A Boston Tradition”, 24 September 2015
Boston Athenaeum Video
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pierce, Samuel Stillman
American grocers
Businesspeople from Boston
1807 births
1881 deaths
Companies established in 1831
Copley Square
Economic history of Boston
19th century in Boston
People from South End, Boston
19th-century American businesspeople