The Henry A. Peirce Papers consists chiefly of correspondence, deeds and other records of land transfer, surveyors’ plans and bills and receipts. There is also one diary. The collection is divided into two parts. The first contains the records of the Twenty Associates Land Company, which controlled 100,000 acres in Maine during the period from 1794 when Joseph Peirce was chosen clerk, until 1832, when Joseph Hardy Peirce, who had been acting as his father’s attorney for many years, died at sea. They acted on their own behalf, as well as that of the company, speculating on this land in Maine. The second, smaller part consists mostly of the letters of instruction written by Henry Augustus Peirce, son of Joseph Hardy, to his nephew, Marcus Peirce Hall, who was running a cotton plantation in Mississippi in 1866. There is also a small amount of material concerned with Peirce family interest in trade in the Far East and with domestic matters.

The Twenty Associates Land Company, whose full name is the Twenty Associates of the Lincolnshire Company, was founded as a speculative land company in 1719. The Twenty Associates traced its descent from a royal grant of 1629 to Beauchamp and Everett. In 1719, President John Leverett of Harvard formed the Ten Proprietors and Twenty Associates Land Companies, which divided between them right to 900 square miles between the Muscongus and Penobscot rivers in Maine. In 1731, these two groups subdivided their land to reward General Samuel Waldo, who had protected their rights from royal interference. Waldo’s share came by the inheritance of his wife, Waldo’s granddaughter, into the hands of General Henry Knox. Knox, 1750-1806, Washington’s commander of artillery and first Secretary of War, with great power in the Massachusetts legislature, forced the Twenty Associates to subdivide still further. In 1794, his friend Joseph Peirce, who had been his commander in the “Grenadier Company” of Boston even before the Revolution, and who served with him during the Revolution, was made clerk of the Twenty Associates.

The first series of records, those of the Company itself, date from 1629 to about 1920. They include Deed Book “A”, into which were copied many of the original granting instruments and deeds. A second group of records documents the settlement with Knox. The third, larger group contains papers from the time that Joseph Peirce was clerk of the Associates. It documents the sales and the lawsuits pursued on behalf of the descendants of the original shareholders and the people who bought into shares. The holdings involved were scattered over all the towns that were carved out of the land grant.

The second series of records, those from the towns, consists of deeds, leases, plans of land and papers of lawsuits from the towns of Appleton, Camden with Rockport, Hope, Liberty and Montville. Although the Twenty Associates had been founded in 1719, settlement of the land had to wait until the end of the French and Indian War. Not until 1768 was the land surveyed and the terms of settlement set forth. The original land mass was divided into the First and Second Great Divisions. Camden was the first settlement. These records, which begin in 1768, have been arranged chronologically under the name of the town. They include the papers of a complicated series of lawsuits dealing with badly surveyed land on Beauchamp Neck in Camden.

The third series of records consists of papers of Joseph and Joseph Hardy Peirce dealing with Maine. They include Joseph Peirce’s letter book as clerk of the Twenty Associates for 1821. They also include records made by Joseph Hardy during his efforts to live in Maine and to straighten out titles. In 1808 he made a survey of company lands, in 1811 he lived for a year in Camden, attempting to clear titles over the strenuous objections of those in residence. Through the 1820s he attempted to deal with the complications of Maine land sales by mail, mostly through the law firm of Eusebius Fales and William Farley. After the death of his aged father in 1828, he went again to Maine to untangle claims against the estate and to raise cash by selling unproductive land. The papers of a difficult lawsuit against John Dorr of Boston involving these Maine lands shed light on this same problem.

There is a small series of papers dealing with family matters in Boston. The legal papers dealing with Joseph’s estate in both Massachusetts and Maine probate courts are there. Joseph Hardy was clerk of the Boston Municipal Court from 1816 to 1830, and there are some papers dealing with that aspect of his life. He was also involved with foreign trade, especially with the Far East and made trips to India, France, and Rio between 1805 and 1810. The diary of his voyage as far as Cape Town in 1805 has been preserved with these papers. It includes a full description of a “Crossing the Line” ceremony. There are also domestic bills and receipts.

Henry Augustus Peirce, 1808-1886, one of Joseph’s many sons, made the shipping business his career. He first sailed at the age of sixteen as clerk to his brother Marcus on an expedition for sea otter pelts off the coast of British Columbia. At the age of twenty, he set up as a merchant in Hawaii, where he was to return in his later years as American diplomat to the Hawaiian Court. He spent the middle of his life mostly in Boston. There are a few letters and reports documenting this phase of his life.

The bulk of the Henry A. Peirce material consists of letters of instruction to his nephew Marcus Peirce Hall, who in 1866 was employed by a group of Boston merchants and philanthropists to manage a cotton plantation in Yazoo County, Mississippi.

The records include letters of instruction, bills and receipts, labor contracts with foreman and with the freedmen who worked in the fields, and a speech to the freedmen by Peirce detailing their duties and privileges. The Mississippi rose and flooded out the enterprise, which was abandoned at the end of the year 1866.

A very few letters and receipts of other family members have been preserved with the collection. They include some letters from Marcus Tullius Peirce, son of Joseph Hardy, who was the captain of the ship Griffin, on the expedition for sea otter pelts on which Henry Augustus served as clerk.