Peirce, Cyrus

Peirce, Cyrus a Congregational minister, noted as an American educator, was born at Waltham, Mass., Aug. 15, 1790. He was educated at Harvard University, where he graduated in 1810. He taught a private school in Nantucket two years; then studied theology at Cambridge three years, and resumed his school at Nantucket. He commenced preaching in 1818; was minister of a Congregational Church at North Reading from May, 1819, to May, 1827, but, preferring the vocation of a teacher, opened a school at North Andover; from 1830 to 1836 he managed a large school at Nantucket; became principal of its high school in 1837; and from 1839 to 1842 was principal of the first Normal School in America, at Lexington, Mass. After two years of rest he took charge of the Female Normal School at West Newton, where he continued till his death. He published A Letter on Normal Schools, addressed to the Hon. Henry Barnard (1851), and a prize essay on Crime, its Cause and Cure (1853). He died April 5, 1860. See National Teachers' Monthly, Sept. 1875, p. 325 sq.; Barnard's American Journal of Education, December, 1857.