Person:William Pierce (20)

[Brøderbund WFT Vol. 2, Ed. 1, Tree #5636, Date of Import: Jan 3, 2000]

William Blake, b. 1815, d. 1888, was a lawyer in the early part of his career, and later the founder of the Tappan-McKillop Commercial Agency at both Cincinnati and Chicago. This Tappan-McKillop Commercial Agency was the parent of both the Dun and Bradstreet agencies and when William Blake was associated with the Tappan-McKillop agency, he was a co-worker with both Dun and Bradstreet. In 1860 William Blake moved from Cincinnati to Chicago, where, besides establishing and having charge of the Tappan-McKillop Commercial Agency for several years, became the founder and first editor of the "Chicago Journal of Commerce." In 1869 he retired from business, and after that he spent most of his declining years in traveling, his death occurring in 1888.

William Blake Pierce compiled and published "My Ancestors in America" Chicago, Illinois 1864.

The following is quoted from a letter from Lucy Tappan Nicolas to George Dick Pierce (no Date) approx. 1986

"In 1836 there was a cholera epidemic in New York City and William Blake Pierce, George Dick's great grandfather, put his wife and two children, William B. Pierce II and Lucy Tappan Pierce (my grandmother) on a sloop and told the Captain to put in the first port that was free of the malady. Your grandfather, Robert Pierce, was not born then. It was Clinton, Conn. William Blake Pierce bought land on the Sound in Clinton and built two houses one for him and wife and one for his daughter, my Grandmother, with a bridge of sighs between. After the Chicago fire in 1870 when the family moved to Chicago, the property was sold and the family rented houses as they came down with carriage and horses each summer until 1905. In the mean time Robert Pierce, Dick's Grandfather married one of the three Farnham girls. Margaret, who married Alfred Stevens a dentist and they had three sons, John, Alfred and Robert. A second sister married Col. Fox and they had two sons, Farnham and Frederick. John never married. Then your Grandfather married Mary Hand Farnham and had three sons, Arthur, Robert and Willard. Arthur died in infancy and Willard in 1916 just before he was to marry Margaret Koonz Hall. William Blake Pierce was a well known lawyer in Chicago and died in 1870 just after the Chicago fire."