NOW FOR THE PIERCE CLAN

Now for Dad's side of the family.....
   You and I knew Grandma Pierce when she was quite afluent, but she was not always that way.  She was born into a preacher's family - her dad was a Nazarene preacher. He was a super strict, conservative man and the family was very ordinary.  I remember her telling me once that when she was a girl, there was a period when she could not go to school as she had no shoes to wear!  There were several children and Grandma's birth mother died quite young.  Her Dad married again.

The one sister I knew was her sister, Edith.  When we lived in Rutland, when you older girls were babies, she brought her sister with her and drove up to spend some time visiting us.  Aunt Edith had married an eastern European immigrant, and they lived on a hand-to-mouth kind of farm.  There were a number of children, and without doubt that family still lives in the Danielson area of Connecticut.

Grandma had a brother whom we knew, Uncle Nelson.  He and his wife, Elsie, had a daughter, Beverly, and the whole family traveled out to our wedding in Pennsylvania.  Uncle Nelson lived on a farm in the Danielson area, and I remember visiting there once.  They were good Christian people and Nazarene.

Grandpa Pierce I never met.  Just about the time Dad and I started dating, when we were both at Nyack College, Dad got word that his father had had a massive heart attack and was not expected to live.  I was working as roving hostess in the dining room that day when the phone call came for Dad saying his dad had passed on, and I had to deliver the message to him.  He went home for a week for the funeral.  So that is why I never met your Grandfather Pierce.  The family were farmers - remember when we all visited that old family farm, which is like a museum.  Grandpa and Grandma lived on that old farm, then moved on to another house, and eventually moved to the big white house in Brooklyn, which we visited last year.

Both Grandma and Grandpa worked in the Connecticut Baptist Convention. He was for a while president of the state Baptist convention, and used to often give messages and speeches to various groups. He was a well known Baptist layman in that area.  Grandma also worked in the Missions department of the Connecticut Baptist Convention, and every year she planned an elaborate women's missions conference in Hartford.  After Grandpa's death, Grandma joined a Baptist group and made a world tour by ship.  She also went to Alaska by boat with a group.  And of course she came more than once to visit us in Burkina Faso.

Grandpa Pierce had a brother, Charles, who died young.  He also had a brother, Fred, and we used to visit them in Massachusettes when you girls were young.  Fred was an educator all his life and worked in the Massachusettes school system.  We visited them a couple times, and when you children were young, they always sent us Christmas gifts.  They had one son who was mentally incapacitated, a big man. He was not violent, very passive, but a big care for the parents all of his life, his name was David. Uncle Fred and Aunt Gladys had another son, Stanley, who was also an educator. He and his family lived near Chicago.  We went to visit them one time when we were involvd in a TEE seminar in Wheaton.  They were Christian people, middle class, had a couple of children also. We used to exchange cards and news at Christmas time each year.

So Grandma came from a Nazarene background and Grandpa Pierce's family were all Baptists....
 how did they get togther??  The story goes that they met in a grocery store. He may have been working there and she came to buy something, and that was the beginning of a long family line of Pierce's!! 

So in capsule form,  this is the tale of the Amasa Dowe Pierce family, to which you all belong!