William Pierce/Peirce/Pearce

(December 25, 1744 – October 10, 1840) 

William Pierce was a Bostonian barber working at his shop on Marshall’s Lane in December 1773.   

Pierce was a well-known confidant of John Adams. Despite having numerous accounts about his participation in the Boston Tea Party, not much is known about William Pierce’s life. He did briefly flee Boston following the Battles of Lexington and Concord, but returned shortly after the city’s liberation in March 1776.  

He would live a long, prosperous life of 93 years. In fellow Boston Tea Party participant George Robert Twelves Hewes’ memoir, he describes Pierce as “…the oldest acting barber alive.” In a newspaper article printed in April 1840, Pierce considered himself “…one of the last survivors of the Boston Tea Party.”  

William Pierce died in Boston, MA, on October 10, 1840, and is buried in Boston’s Granary Burying Ground, Tomb 184.