Long before the Pierce name became synonymous with funeral homes throughout Southern California, there was James Washington Pierce, a New York farmer and blacksmith who came west late in life and lived just long enough to see his sons establish what would become one of Los Angeles’s great undertaking dynasties. Today he rests quietly at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, his modest grave giving little indication that his descendants would play an important role in the way generations of Angelenos were laid to rest.
By Allan R. Ellenberger
James Washington Pierce was born on August 8, 1822, in Dutchess County, New York, when Los Angeles was still a distant Mexican pueblo, and California remained nearly three decades from statehood. He grew up in rural New York and eventually settled in Delaware County, where he learned the blacksmith’s trade and also farmed. It was the practical, physically demanding life common to nineteenth-century America, far removed from the rapidly expanding city his children would someday help build in Southern California.
Pierce married Frances Cornelia Clark, a native of Delaware County and the daughter of Charles Clark, a Connecticut-born farmer who had settled in the region. Surviving biographical accounts establish their marriage in New York around 1850, although an exact marriage date remains elusive. Together they raised an exceptionally large family. He was the father of twelve children (one daughter died as an infant). Family records identified them as Edward T., Robert W., Herbert A., Charles C., William H., Marcus A., Catherine, Frederick E., Frank O., Clarence W., and James R. Pierce.
The family would prove unusually accomplished. Sons became businessmen, physicians, educators, ministers and civic figures, and several would eventually become closely associated with the funeral profession. One son, Edward Timothy Pierce, became an important educator in Southern California and also rests at Hollywood Forever. Another, William Henry Pierce, would become a Los Angeles city councilman and one of the principal founders of Pierce Brothers Mortuary.
Before any of that happened, however, James Washington Pierce answered the call of the Civil War. He was already in his early forties when, on September 3, 1864, he enlisted as a private in Company D of the 144th New York Volunteer Infantry. His decision was notable because he was older than many of the men entering military service. The regiment had been organized at Delhi, New York, in September 1862 and had already experienced extensive service by the time Pierce joined. It had served in the defenses of Washington, around Suffolk, Virginia, and along the South Carolina coast, including operations connected with Charleston, Fort Wagner and Fort Sumter.
Pierce joined during the regiment’s final phase of service. By late 1864, the 144th was operating primarily in the Department of the South. The regiment participated in the Battle of Honey Hill on November 30, 1864, and later remained on duty around Hilton Head. It was honorably mustered out there on June 25, 1865. During its entire wartime service, the regiment suffered substantial losses, with disease taking an especially heavy toll.
After the war, Pierce returned to New York and resumed civilian life. For another three decades, he remained rooted in the state where he had been born, married, and raised his family. By then, however, several of his sons had begun looking west.
William H. Pierce came to California in 1880. His brother Frederick followed soon afterward. The brothers ran several businesses before moving into the livery trade, an occupation that naturally overlapped with undertaking in an age when both the living and the dead traveled by horse-drawn vehicle. William operated a furniture business and livery stable in Los Angeles, and the brothers increasingly found themselves transporting bodies from homes to cemeteries. What began as one part of the transportation business gradually became their future.
Edward Timothy Pierce became a prominent educator in Southern California and is also buried at Hollywood Forever Cemetery beside his parents.
In 1896, James and Frances Pierce finally followed their children to Los Angeles. James was approximately seventy-four years old and essentially retired. He had come west to be near family members who had already established themselves there. After a lifetime in New York, he now lived in a city growing at astonishing speed, surrounded by sons whose businesses and professions were becoming part of that expansion.
Among those enterprises was the one that would make the family name famous. In 1902, William and Frederick Pierce formally entered the undertaking business as Pierce Brothers & Company. Their establishment at 810–812 South Flower Street included a chapel, reception rooms, offices, and facilities for preparing the dead. The business eventually expanded far beyond its modest beginnings. Over time, other family members became involved, and Pierce Brothers grew into an organization that operated numerous funeral homes, as well as cemetery and crematory interests, throughout Southern California. James lived long enough to see that new venture begin.
On the morning of December 30, 1904, Pierce was at his daughter's home, 521 Avenue 66, when he complained that he was not feeling well. He had been active only days earlier, visiting friends and acquaintances and showing no indication that death was near. Shortly after noon, he fell asleep. At approximately 1:30 that afternoon, he died from what was later determined to be chronic bronchitis. He was eighty-two years old.
The ten sons of James Washington Pierce, who founded Pierce Brothers Mortuary and helped establish the family name in Southern California’s funeral industry.
The newspaper described his death in the wonderfully plain language of the period as resulting from “a simple wearing out of the human machinery.” After more than eight decades of farming, blacksmithing, military service, raising a large family and finally moving across the country, his life came quietly to an end.
Pierce had also been a deeply religious man. He had belonged to the Baptist Church for approximately seventy years, meaning that his religious affiliation stretched back almost to childhood. His Civil War service remained important to him, and he was a member of the Grand Army of the Republic, the powerful fraternal organization of Union veterans.
His funeral provided perhaps the most moving connection between the father and the dynasty his sons were creating. Services were held on a Tuesday afternoon at two o’clock in the chapel of the Pierce Brothers undertaking establishment. The company that would eventually conduct thousands upon thousands of funerals in Los Angeles was now conducting one of its most personal.
The grave of James Washington Pierce and his wife, Frances. Chandler Gardens, Sect. 12, Lot 273, Grave 2.
James Washington Pierce’s eight sons served as their father’s pallbearers. It is difficult to imagine a more fitting family tableau. The sons who had gone west, established businesses, entered medicine and education, and built new lives in Los Angeles now gathered to carry the man who had raised them to his grave.
Pierce was buried at Hollywood Cemetery, the young burial ground founded only a few years earlier. His wife Frances survived him by several years and was eventually buried beside him. Their shared stone is simple, identifying Washington Pierce, 1822–1904, and Frances Clark Pierce, 1831–1910.
The business their sons created continued to grow long after both parents were gone. In the 1920s, Pierce Brothers opened its landmark mortuary at 720 West Washington Boulevard, designed by Meyer & Holler. Completed in 1923, it became Los Angeles’s first purpose-built full-service funeral home and helped turn that stretch of Washington Boulevard into the city’s famous “Mortuary Row.” The building survives today as a designated Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument.
In December 1939, the family took over the former Leroy Bagley Mortuary at 5959 Santa Monica Blvd (across from Hollywood Cemetery). The place went on to serve generations of Hollywood residents, including many from the motion picture industry.
The landmark Pierce Bros. Mortuary at 720 West Washington Boulevard in Los Angeles.
The Pierce Bros. Hollywood Mortuary at 5959 Santa Monica Boulevard, across from Hollywood Cemetery. The building was later demolished.
Eventually, the Pierce Brothers organization became associated with some of the most famous funerals and cemeteries in Southern California, and its name became familiar to generations of Los Angeles families. William Pierce remained a civic leader and the company's president, and by the time of his death in 1939, the business had grown into one of the largest of its kind in the nation.
James Washington Pierce belonged to an older generation, one that arrived before Hollywood became Hollywood. He was a farmer, blacksmith, Civil War veteran, husband and father whose greatest legacy was ultimately his family. And in one of those wonderfully appropriate twists of cemetery history, the patriarch of one of Los Angeles’s greatest undertaking families lies among the thousands of people whose final journeys men bearing his own name would spend decades helping to arrange.
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Discover the fascinating story of James Washington Pierce, a pioneer of Southern California’s funeral industry whose legacy lives on at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Did you know about his contributions to Hollywood history? Please share your thoughts in the comments, rate the article, and share it with fellow Old Hollywood enthusiasts and history lovers. Your participation helps keep Hollywood’s forgotten stories alive!
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