Samuel Pierce Organ Pipe Co.

Samuel Pierce was born in Hebron, New Hampshire, on June 12, 1819. He moved to Reading in 1837, where he apprenticed to George Badger (b. 1814), a cabinet-maker. In 1842, Pierce joined the crew of E. & G.G. Hook in Boston, working initially as a joiner, but soon became adept at making and voicing organ pipes. As the Hook brothers expanded the firm during the 1840s, they encouraged Pierce to establish his own independent pipe-making shop. In 1846, Pierce returned to Reading with his wife, Sarah C. (Easton) Pierce, to set up business, and chose a location near the Boston & Maine Railroad. Established in 1847, the Pierce Organ Pipe Co. was supplying many of America's leading organ shops by the 1860s. Moreover, the firm sold hardware, keyboards, nameplates, stenciled front pipes, stopknobs, tools, and most of the other supplies needed by organbuilders. By 1879, when a reporter interviewed him for The Music Trades Review, Pierce stated: "When I commenced business in 1847, thirty-two years ago, I determined to make only the highest class of work, and through all the changes that have taken place during that number of years, I have never deviated from that first resolution ..." By then, the factory had grown to 10,000 square feet of space on three floors, and the firm had thirty-five employees. Among them were some of the leading names in American organbuilding: John H. Corrie (1827-1907), William A. Corrie (1824-1896), Edwin B. Hedges (1872-1967), Stephen P. Kinsley (1826-1895), Thomas R. Todd (d. 1912), and Frederick I. White (1866-1947). Samuel Pierce died in Reading on September 22, 1895.