Cyrus Pierce was born on August 15, 1790 in Waltham, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. He was the son of Isaac and Hannah (Mason) Peirce and a descendant of John Pers who was in Watertown in 1637. His father, one of the Waltham minute-men, took part in the engagements at Concord, Lexington, and Bunker Hill.
During his early days in the district school, Cyrus Peirce was a student of exceptional promise. His parents, inspired by his ambition and accomplishments, sent him to the Framingham Academy to prepare for college. Later he was placed with Dr. Stearns, the scholarly pastor of Lincoln, for a term of private instruction. At sixteen Pierce entered Harvard College, graduating with honors in 1810. His winter-term vacations from college were spent as teacher in the district school at West Newton. Immediately after graduation he took charge of a private school at Nantucket. After completing two years Cyrus Peirce resigned and entered the Harvard Divinity School, from which he graduated in 1815.
Cyrus Peirce was persuaded, however, to return to his former place of teaching in Nantucket. He resigned in 1818 to enter the ministry and was ordained on May 19, 1819, becoming pastor of the Congregational Church in North Reading, Massachussets. As a teacher, Pierce had been eminently successful. In the pulpit he preached a strict conformity in matters of belief and personal conduct that made him rather unpopular. While in Reading, he espoused the cause of temperance and attracted favorable attention by his sermons and occasional discourses on the subject. After eight years of faithful service he resigned from his church, May 19, 1827, and withdrew from the ministry, finally convinced that his talents could find more effective expression in the schoolroom. In the summer of 1827 he removed to North Andover, where he conducted a school for four years in partnership with Simeon Putnam. Then, after repeated invitations from former friends and patrons, he returned to Nantucket. While engaged here in the management of his private school, he became interested in the condition of the local public schools.
At the request of the school committee, Cyrus Peirce outlined a system which provided for a properly related series of public schools, including the primary, intermediate, grammar, and high school. In 1837, when the new scheme was ready to be launched, Peirce was prevailed upon to relinquish his private school and accept the position of principal of the Nantucket High School. His success there attracted the attention of Horace Mann, secretary of the Massachusetts state board of education, who visited Nantucket for the purpose of observing the results of his reforms. When the first state normal school was established at Lexington, Massachussets, in 1839, the state board unanimously elected Peirce principal. He entered upon his new duties, July 3, 1839. The institution opened with three pupils, but within three years the enrolment had increased to a satisfactory number.
Cyros Peirce realized that it devolved upon him to prove the value of the normal school and gave himself unsparingly to his pioneer task. From the beginning he strove to make his pupils masters of the subjects taught in the schools, insisting that this was fundamental to all good teaching. In the "model department, " a school composed of children of the neighborhood, his normal pupils engaged in practice teaching under his supervision, thereby testing for themselves the principles in which he had instructed them. As a result of his labors he was obliged to resign, in 1842, to seek recuperation. After spending two years at his former residence in Nantucket, Cyrus Peirce was persuaded to resume his position. The school, meantime, had been moved to West Newton.
Here Cyrus Peirce remained until April 1849, when ill health again forced him to resign. Fortunately, at this time, he was offered an opportunity to travel: the American Peace Society appointed him delegate to the World's Peace Congress, which convened at Paris, August 22, 1849. Upon his return, in 1850, he became an instructor in an academy conducted by Nathaniel T. Allan, in West Newton. He continued in this position until his death on April 5, 1860.
On April 1, 1816, Cyrus Peirce married one of his students, Harriet, daughter of William and Deborah (Pinkham) Coffin. They had no children.
