English settlers who arrived on the ship Mary and John at Nantasket Beach in June of 1630 erected the first settlement just north of that site. The arrival of the landing party initiated the long-term occupation of these indigenous homelands, a process that transformed a landscape of natural resources collectively managed by Indigenous people into a stockaded settlement governed by settler values of private property, patriarchy, and resource extraction.

Updated narratives that more accurately explain the relationship between Indigenous people and English colonists in the seventeenth century come from more nuanced research and the oral histories of the Massachusett people, who still live in their ancestral homelands and continue the practice of storytelling to pass their history from one generation to the next.

Thomas Pierce inherited the Pierce lands when his father Robert died in 1664. He had been married for three years to Mary Fry, from Weymouth, and the two of them, with their son Thomas, may have lived with the senior Pierces. However, when his father died Thomas’s independence was still circumscribed, as his mother retained her half share of the property for another thirty-one years. Thomas and Mary had seven more children, four of whom lived long enough to be mentioned in Thomas’s will. Although children frequently died in infancy or in early childhood in the seventeenth century, seven of the Pierce children lived into their early twenties, and the family household during those years was large and multi-generational.

Over his lifetime Thomas Pierce added extensively to the Pierce family holdings, including the homestead now known as Pierce House and its surrounding twenty acres of upland. In 1696 he purchased from James Minot twenty acres of upland, “together with all and singular the housing Ediffices, buildings, and Fences standing thereon Yard Garden.” This property, which included Pierce House, lay along the Lower Road not far from the Robert Pierce House, with the house situated in the northwest portion, on a crest which sloped down hill to the south and east toward the Neponset River. Built in 1683 by a member of the Minot family, the house was part of James Minot’s inheritance from his father, but James, a teacher and physician, had moved to Concord, Massachusetts, in the 1680s. Elegant and fashionable, the house had characteristic First Period detail, including a gabled roof and small diamond-paned windows. A two-and-a-half-story structure, with two rooms on each floor, plus an attic, it was also a large house for its time. With various additions and alterations over the years, it would be the Pierce family home for eight more generations.

When Samuel Pierce inherited the family home and approximately seventy acres of land from his father in 1744, he was aged forty, and had been married to Abigail Moseley, also of Dorchester, for twelve years. The couple had four young children; two more daughters were born in the late 1740s. The family had been living in Pierce House with Samuel’s parents, John and Abigail, and the widowed Abigail continued to live with them until her own death in 1747.

Over the next twenty-five years Samuel Pierce and his son, also named Samuel, made various additions and improvements to the family home and farm. A later family historian, George Francis Pierce, described Samuel as a man of comfortable circumstances and good taste, referring not only to his property holdings, but to such things as a collection of family china, and the alterations to the house reflected these attributes as the dwelling was enlarged and more attention paid to elegant detail. At some point between c. 1712 and 1765 either John or Samuel Pierce added a lean-to across the back of the house, perhaps to create additional cooking space as room usage became more specialized. In 1765 Samuel Jr. constructed a two-story addition onto the eastern end of the house, incorporating newly fashionable Georgian decorative elements. Samuel Sr. and Abigail occupied these rooms, a lower room with a separate cooking fireplace and an upper bedroom chamber, while Samuel Jr. and his new wife Elizabeth Howe Pierce lived in the older center portion of the house.

Samuel Pierce Sr. also added to the row of outbuildings that stretched eastward from the house itself. This collection of buildings — woodshed, gate, corn barn, pigpen, slop and tool house, carriage house, cowyard, and barn — was depicted in an 1877 painting now in the Pierce-Shaughnessey family’s possession, and it offers a visual image of an eighteenth- and nineteenth-century farm and the variety and complexity of the tasks that farming involved.

Like the records he left, Colonel Samuel Pierce’s major concerns focused on the patterns of daily life—farming tasks and cycles, the weather, kin and community relationships, improvements to his family home—he was also deeply engaged by the world around him. Pierce was an astute observer whose commentary on the American Revolutionary era brings to life the events of this crucial period in American history. Participant as well as observer, Pierce made his political sympathies clear. An early supporter of the patriot cause, he resigned his commission in the King’s militia to join the Massachusetts militia and took part in what Dorchester historians view as a crucial step in the United States’ war for independence: the fortification of Dorchester Heights and the forced evacuation of the British troops from Boston in March of 1776. He led his regiment for the duration of the war.

During the ten years between 1765 and 1775, a series of political conflicts between Great Britain and her American colonies contributed to the breakdown of the imperial relationship, the outbreak of armed conflict between patriot and loyalist troops, and the eventual declaration of independence by the new United States. Because Boston was a center of colonial protest, Britain tried to make the town an object lesson in imperial authority, and from nearby Dorchester, Col. Samuel reported his personal politics and involvement in the town’s growing support for the patriot cause. All through New England the Sons of Liberty had formed in 1765 in opposition to the Stamp Act, and Col. Samuel recorded that they met in Dorchester at a “very Grand Entertainment at mr. Lemuel Robinson’s” in August 1769. The Pierce family also held patriotic events at their home, including a “spining match” held “at our house” in June of 1769. Such gatherings were part of the colonists’ campaign to produce and wear their own homespun clothing rather than rely on English imported goods.

From Dorchester Col. Samuel observed the unfolding of events in Boston. On March 6, 1770, the day following the Boston Massacre, he noted “four kild in boston by the Soldiers.” He also recorded the growing support of the Dorchester citizenry for the colonial protest, as evidenced by a town meeting in December of 1772 “to Exclaim against the Duty being Laid upon us & Judges having their Saliry paid from England &c.” Pierce also followed the controversy over the Tea Act of 1773 closely. England had granted what colonial merchants termed an unfair advantage to the East India Tea Company’s virtual monopoly and the fact that Parliament had levied a tax on tea in the first place. Many colonists resolved to boycott tea, but a large supply arrived in Boston late in 1773. “Boston,” observed Pierce in his journal on December 11, “is full of trouble about the tee. . .,” and several days later Boston radicals orchestrated the Boston Tea Party.

By June of 1774, following the passage of the Intolerable Acts, tensions between the colonists and Great Britain had increased. Colonial self-government and the judiciary were reduced, more British troops and warships arrived, and “Boston [was] in a most Deplorible Condition.” In the fall of 1774 Col. Samuel Pierce and others in the provincial militia had resigned their commissions under the crown and received new appointments as officers in the colonial militia. The following March the town of Dorchester voted that all men fit for military duty should be ready to respond to any alarm on a minute’s notice. When actual conflict broke out at Lexington and Concord in April of 1775, Col. Pierce’s loyalties were evident: “April 19. this Day there was a terible battle at Lexinton & Concord between our People and the Soldiers which marcht out of Boston the Soldiers fird on our people and then the Battle Began & there was about 40 of our People kild & 190 soldiers as near as could be Recolected.”

Over the spring and summer of 1775 Pierce observed and recorded activity in Boston as some Tories from surrounding towns moved into the city and patriots fled. He lamented the “Terrable battle fout at CharlesTown”—the Battle of Bunker Hill—and noted various “scirmiges” with the British regulars, particularly on the Boston Harbor Islands, as each side sought to establish position and to cut off the other’s supply of hay. General George Washington had set up headquarters in Cambridge, with his other troops camped in Roxbury, Somerville, and Dorchester, so that the city of Boston, though held by the British, was surrounded. When the patriot officer Col. Henry Knox arrived with guns and ammunition dragged on sledges from Ft. Ticonderoga, Washington and his advisors decided to act.

Washington’s plan was to fortify Dorchester Heights, now South Boston, and therefore “command a great part of the town and almost the whole harbor.” After careful preparation Colonel Samuel and his troops took part in the expedition that began on the night of March 4, 1776. About 5,000 men and over 380 wagons sneaked onto Dorchester Heights, placing straw along the road to muffle the sound; the men were under orders not to speak above a whisper. The troops carried the tools, materials, and arms for their defense, including bales of hay, barrels of stone and earth, and the heavy siege guns from Ticonderoga. It was, according to Pierce, “the most work Don that Ever was Don in one Night in New England.” When the British commander, General Howe, realized his predicament, he sent word to Washington that if he and his troops were allowed to leave without being fired upon, he would refrain from destroying the city. On March 17, 1776 (still observed in Boston as Evacuation Day), Howe, his 8,000 troops, and approximately 900 loyalists set sail for Halifax. Although Boston had suffered much during the occupation, with buildings destroyed for firewood, troops and horses quartered at will, and hunger rampant, Howe kept his word and did not burn the city. He and his troops left, wrote Col. Samuel, “like so many frited Sheep.” By March 28 patriots were able to “go into boston all freely,” and in Dorchester town meeting pledged in May of 1776, “america Declard Independancy from Great britain.”

For the duration of the war, Col. Samuel Pierce remained in the colonial militia, one of the two separate but complementary military forces that fought for American independence. As commander of the South Dorchester militia regiment Col. Samuel Pierce seems to have held a chiefly administrative position. He dispatched men from his unit to serve with the Continental Army near Boston and, later, in the Middle Colonies and other New England locations. In addition to troop deployment, Pierce handled both payroll and provisions. Pierce did accompany his men on two expeditions, one through New York to New Jersey in 1777 and one to Tiverton, Rhode Island, in 1779, and he also saw active duty on Castle Island in Boston Harbor. During his absence, Elizabeth Pierce, with the assistance of Samuel’s sister Rebecca, took care of the family and managed the farm. In the later years of the war, with fighting concentrated n the southern states, Col. Pierce detached his men for only limited service, but they maintained their role as patriotic citizen-solders until the war ended in 1783.

By the late 1860s the Pierce family was involved in speculative development of the family’s own properties, not merely the sale of their land to other builders. Between 1867 and 1872 nine houses were built on Lewis’s fifteen-acre home lot. Although Lewis Pierce’s name appears on all of the deeds and mortgages, his sons, Charles, William Augustus, and Lewis Francis, probably spearheaded the development, since Lewis was by this time in his eighties. Brick masons, they may have participated in the actual construction of at least some of the homes along with Elias Perkins, a housewright from nearby Quincy.

Lewis financed his development and construction through a series of successive mortgages and property sales, following a pattern typical for small nineteenth-century builders. The proceeds of successive sales and mortgages provided the funds to construct the additional houses; Lewis either sold each newly built home outright or mortgaged it before it was sold. In either case, he then had new capital to finance construction on yet another of his lots, and the proceeds from that development helped to support yet another building project. Still standing, these nine houses built within the boundaries of the old Pierce farm were similar in style, mostly two-story, mansard roof dwellings with Italianate details. Some of their residents worked nearby, but most of them commuted via the nearby railroad line.

Lewis Pierce died in 1874 without a will. Although most of his houses had been sold and Lewis’s debt on them cleared, Lewis owned one unsold house, at 28 Plain Street, with an outstanding mortgage, and he had mortgaged a number of undeveloped properties. He also had a mortgage on his own family house and some 50,000 square feet surrounding it. Lewis and his sons may have intended to begin another round of speculative building and development, as they had done in the late 1860s, but the lingering effects of the Panic of 1873 and then Lewis’s death interrupted their plan. Because Lewis’s primary asset was his undeveloped land and because he had so many outstanding mortgages, his four children could not pay his debts out of his estate. Lewis Francis, administrator for the estate, petitioned the probate court for permission to partition and sell the remaining property.

When Pierce House came up for public auction along with the rest of Lewis Pierce’s land in 1876, William Augustus Pierce, Lewis’s youngest son, was the highest bidder. Valued at $500 at Lewis’s death in 1874, the house and its 10,000-square-foot lot were sold to William Augustus for $1,400. Given the family’s close ties, their long residence in Pierce House, and the fact that Lewis Francis Pierce lived right across the way, it is not surprising that the Pierce heirs would prearrange William Augustus’s purchase. Proud of their family’s history and heritage, the Pierces would have been loath to permit an “outsider” to purchase the house. Family members even provided financial assistance; Lewis Francis Pierce agreed to pay or obtain the release on an existing mortgage on the property, and a cousin and neighbor, Frederick Leeds Pierce, loaned William $1,000 toward the purchase. Without a directive from a will, which in most previous generations had provided for the disposition of the house and lot, Lewis’s children settled the issue among themselves before the auction.

In the first years after William Augustus moved back into the family house, he would have observed few changes in his surroundings, despite the breakup of the Pierce property. Although Oakton Avenue had been extended from Plain Street to Adams Street, the street was a dirt carriage way, and the new landowners were slow to develop their lots. By 1884 only three new houses had been built. The Pierce barn and outbuildings, on lands no longer belonging to the Pierces, were torn down, but the sense of the fields and orchards remained. Twenty years later, however, the lots had begun to fill up and the sense of the neighborhood had changed. Between 1884 and 1904, twenty-one additional houses were built on the old farm property, bringing the total to thirty-five, including the Pierce House. Although some open areas remained, these new houses were more densely spaced. William and Antoinette’s new neighbors were mostly artisans and their wives with young families, and almost a third of them were of Irish descent, reflecting the changed demographics of Boston and Dorchester.

The changing face of the Pierce neighborhood reflected demographic changes in late nineteenth-century families as well. Like their neighbors, the Pierces had many fewer children than their forebears; middle-class children were regarded as emotional rather than economic contributors to the family unit. In the Victorian family children were to be educated rather than apprenticed, and the family was expected to live as a nuclear unit. William and his wife Antoinette had only two children; their son, William Alvin, died as a baby, and the couple lived in their house with their only daughter, Antoinette Louise, rather than with the multiple generations of family, boarders, or hired help who had shared Pierce House over many earlier generations. After Antoinette’s marriage in 1883 to George Frederick Pierce, the son of Frederick Leeds Pierce and a neighbor and distant cousin she had known all her life, Antoinette moved to a nearby but nonetheless separate household. By 1900 the senior Pierces, both aged seventy-three, were, unlike any previous generation, living alone in their ancestral home. When they died in 1904 and 1905, they left Pierce House to Antoinette, but she and her husband chose to live in his parents’ elegant Victorian home rather than her ancestral one. For the first time in more than 200 years Pierce House would, for the next two decades, not be occupied by lineal Pierce descendants.

In her will Antoinette formalized her vision of Pierce House’s historic as well as family importance. She was determined to save the Old House as family property, specifying that Roger and his family remain in the house. To that end she bequeathed to Roger “the land and buildings located at 24 Oakton Avenue. . . , a property which has been owned and occupied by members of my family for about eight generations past, together with all articles of furniture, ornamentation, and personal property,” items which included such treasured possessions as John Pierce’s shaving mirror and the oak chest and piece of “Old Bread” said to have come from England on the “Mary and John.” Antoinette’s poem had conveyed her pleasure in the continuity of generations in the house, with her images of children asleep in the old bedroom, the family antiques carefully placed where she recalled them from her childhood, and the family stories passed to a new generation. Now her will formally passed the weight of family responsibility to Roger and, looking into the future, to his children. If any of them proved unwilling or unable to stay in the house, Antoinette desired that it be given “to some museum or historical society which will keep it up…” and also display the family’s prized antiques and heirlooms. Having witnessed threats to other historic houses, such as Dorchester’s Blake House, and the demolition of other houses in her neighborhood, including Edward Pierce’s house and Lewis Francis’s and George Francis’s former family home at 31 Oakton Avenue, which was replaced by a school in 1926, Antoinette clearly sought to avoid a similar fate for her beloved Pierce House.