S.S. Pierce

Samuel Stillman Pierce (1807–1881) was a grocer in Boston, Massachusetts, who established the S.S. Pierce company in 1831.

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.

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, 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, Daniel Webster," and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. 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; 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, 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.

Another shop opened in 1898, in Coolidge Corner, Brookline. and that Tudor-style building still stands as a historically significant landmark today.

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