PIERCE, Prof. Bessie Louise

PIERCE

Posted By: Sharon R Becker (email)
Date: 11/11/2014 at 02:43:25

The Globe Gazette
Mason City, Cerro Gordo County, Iowa
Saturday, October 26, 1940, Page 20

THEY STARTED HERE
No. 32 in a Mason City Series of Success Stories

PROF. BESSIE PIERCE, Noted Historian

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
High on the faculty list at America's outstanding Chicago university is a name that is familiar to many Mason Cityans, in part at least.

It is the name of Prof. Bessie Louise Pierce, one of the university's leading and perhaps the country's outstanding authority on the history of Chicago.

Many local persons will not recognize the "professor" part of Bessie Louise Pierce's name, but most of them will remember the diminutive, good-natured Miss Pierce who taught history in the local high school approxiamtely 25 years ago.

In the quarter of a century which has followed since Miss Pierce left Mason City for further education and teaching work at the University of Iowa, she has climbed to a front rank position among the historians of the country. She has established a reputation as a fine scholar, an outstanding teacher and a hsitorical writer of the first water.

* * *
Bessie Louise Pierce was born at Caro, Mich., April 20, 1890 (sic, all other accounts give 1888 as Professor Pierce's birth year), the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Clifford J. Pierce. Following her grade and high school education, she went to the University of Iowa, where she was graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in 1910.

Bessie Louise Pierce knew what she wanted to do, and she set out to do it.She went into the teaching profession and for the next six years was an Iowa high school history teacher. She had always shown an especial interest in dates and events but in the more complex and practical social eddies and undercurrents to be found in the stream of human events as it has coursed through the ages.

It was during this six year period that Miss Pierce taught in Mason City where she earned the respect and admiration of both pupils and associates.

A very small woman, Bessie Louise Pierce did not let her lack of size make any difference. She handled her classes easily, getting along especially well with her pupils. But nobody was allowed to get out of line, for the hard working history teacher could be firm and brooked no monkey business at any time.

* * *
She was especially interested in the activities of the school and took an active part in chaperoning parties. She was nearly always to be found in attendance at football games and other athletic events as well as at plays, debates, or whatever school activities were in progress.

The high school in those days was what is now known as Lincoln school on the corner of Pennsylvania avenue and First strett northeast. Miss Pierce, her mother and her sister, Annie, lived in a house nearby, approximately where the postoffice stands. Many Mason Cityans will remember Annie Pierce as well as her sister, for Annie had a beautiful singing voice. She is not connected with the school of music at the University of Iowa.

In spite of the fact that she was a great mixer and liked people very much, Miss Pierce found a good deal of time to work. Her associates were often apt to see the lights burning in her school room nights as they went past the school or returned for some reason.

* * *
For the diminutive little school teacher was not only talented; she was hard working and ambitious. Much of the night work she did was in all probability school work, but much of it was also further studying to better herself.

BUt she didn't let herself become a drone, as the popularity she ahd as a chaperone for the young people's parties attested. Miss Pierce was a favorite dancing partner of some of the boys, for the liked to swing her off her feet as they whirled about in the day's popular dances.

Returning to her alma mater in the fall of 1916, Miss Pierce was named an instructor in history and took up her studies at the same time. She took work by correspondence at the University of Chicago, and was awarded a master of arts degree in 1918.

A year later, Bessie Louise Pierce became an associate in history at Iowa and retained that ranking until she won her Ph.D. in 1923, when she was made an associate professor and she continued her work at the university until 1929.

* * *
In that year Professor Pierce was offered and accepted a post at one of the world's outstanding citadels of learning, Chicago university. Chicago, while roundly scolded and kidded on the sports pages of the country, is recognized among the world's scholars as one of the finest universities in this or any other country.

So it was a real honor to be elected to a position as associate professor at an institution of this kind. It was a tribute not only to her intelligence and scholarship, but also to her hard work and character. For Chicago wants and takes only the best.

In the years she was studying and teaching, Professor Pierce was keeping herself busy with other things as well. In 1926 she was president of the National Countil for Social Studies. She is a member of the council of the American Historical Association, of the Mississippi Valley Historical association, of the National Educational association, of the American association of Politics and Social Science, the American Association of University Professors and of the American Association of University Women.

* * *
She is also a member of Alpha Xi Delta, PiLambda Theta and Phi Beta Kappa, is secretary-treasurer of the National Council for Social Studies, and is a member of the committee on civic education by radio of the National Advisory Council on Radio Education.

If this were not enough, she is busy with writing and has written or colaborated on several textbooks and other volumes, as well as numerous magazine articles.

Perhaps the work for which she will receive the most recognition, however, is her "History of Chicago." This gigantic writing task she ahs tackled with her customary enthusiasm and hard work and the success of her effort is mirrored in the two volumes she has already had published.

* * *
The second of these volumes, just off the Knopf presses, has been especially well received by the reviewers and bids fair to become a source book for information on Chicago's past.

One reviewer says, "Professor Pierce outlines brilliantly the social changes of the period," and speaks of Professor Pierce's "invaluable history of Chicago." The second volume covers the history of teh great city through the Fire of 1871 with one or more volumes to follow.

And that to date is the story of Prof. Bessie Louise Pierce. It is a story of brillian achievement and hard work in the fields of education, writing and historical research. And it gives promise that its subject, Bessie Louise Pierce,is still to be heard from.

NOTE: Bessie Louise Pierce was professor of History at the University of Chicago until her retirement in 1954. As Others See Chicago was published in 1933 coincident with the Century of Progress celebration, a collection of observations and opinions of visitors to the city. Her monumental three-volumed A History of Chicago was published between 1937 and 1957 - Volume One, published in 1937 went to the year 1848; Volume Two, published in 1940, went to the year of 1871 and the Great Chicago Fire; and, Volume Three, published in 1957, went to the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. She was working on a fourth volume to go to the year 1915 when she died. Professor Pierce's three published volumes earned the city's Distinguished Service Award in 1959, and has endured lasting respect.

Professor Pierce published Public Opinion and the Teaching of History in 1926; Civic Attitudes in American School Textbooks in 1930, and Citizens' Organizations and the Civic Training of Youth in 1933, which drew on her early schoolteaching and reflected her Yankee-Progressive outlook.

Professor Pierce was an advisor to the WPA Foreign Language Press Survey in Chicago 1929-1940, and Director of the History of Chicago Project 1929-1973. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1955.

Professor Pierce retired in 1953 and returned to Iowa City, Iowa, in 1973. She died on October 3, 1974, and was interred at Memory Gardens Cemetery, Iowa City, Iowa.

Anne Elise Pierce was born March 14, 1890, Saginaw, Michigan, and died July 10, 1967. She achieved her honorary doctor of music degree in 1950 from the American Conservatory of Music. She was assistant to the voice teacherat Iowa State Teachers College (later University of Northern Iowa) 1914-17; taught music at State University of Iowa Experimental Schools 1917-19; professor of voice Cornell College Conservatory of Music 1919-23; assistant professor and head S.U.I. Experimental Schools 1926 and associate professor 1939; visiting professor of music Northwestern University summer sessions 1938-46. She retired in 1955.

Photograph courtesy of Globe-Gazette

Additional information from Encyclopedia of Chicago 2004.

Transcription and note by Sharon R. Becker, May of 2014

Cerro Gordo Biographies maintained by Lynn Diemer-Mathews.
WebBBS 4.33 Genealogy Modification Package by WebJourneymen