John Pierce died a few years after the birth of his last child, which threw the responsibility of the family on the oldest son, and perhaps accounts for our knowing so little about him. That Colonel Pierce assumed the responsibility bravely and cheerfully, is evident from his own letters. He was the head of the family, and advised his brothers and sisters, particularly Sarah, when she was in New York preparing for the task which perhaps he had picked out as particularly suited to her strong character. We are told he sent her and Nancy there, while the tuition of one of them was paid for by a cousin, Mr. Landon. Writing of Miss Pierce’s work and influence is needless. The work can speak for itself and for her, who in her quiet, dignified way became such a power among her scholars and the community where she lived and taught, that it extended even to the gay young pupils of the contemporary law school. To this end, diaries and compositions, letters, plays, and rules follow, chronologically arranged, together with the names of as many of the three thousand pupils that came from north, south, east, and west as could be gathered. With them are also the names of some of the men they married. Many of these marriages resulted from the attendance of the young men and women upon these two contemporary and prominent schools. The fame, even the knowledge, of these schools have almost died out in the north, amid the rush and whirl of the active, commercial, and industrial life; but in the south, from which John C. Calhoun and many other afterwards prominent men came to study in Litchfield, their memories and traditions are still alive. As to her preparation by education and surroundings for the task that grew in extent and magnitude so far beyond her expectation, we know that she and her sister Nancy were sent to school in New York with the express purpose in view of their opening a school in Litchfield; but of the school they attended, or of what the teaching consisted, we can learn nothing.