Pierce was born in
Manteca, California. He received his bachelor's degree in
anthropology at the
University of California, Berkeley, and then served as a
sergeant in
Europe in the
United States Army during
World War II. After the war Pierce took a course in the
Russian language in pursuit of a civil service job and then touring the region after World War II. He then returned to Berkeley and earned his master's degree in 1952 and his doctorate in 1956, both in history. He was awarded
Fulbright fellowships in 1953 and 1954. In the mid-1950s he travelled to
Finland for the first time, in order to acquaint himself with the
Slavica collection of the
Helsinki University Library, which has one of the best collections of
Russian literature and Russian journals outside of
Russia and the former
Soviet Union. During that first visit to
Helsinki he met his wife to be, a native of
Kingston upon Hull, working for
Effoa, whom he married during the following winter. Effoa actually had a shipping line from Helsinki to Kingston upon Hull at that time. Incidentally, Pierce would later write an article on the founder of Effoa,
Lars Krogius, as the latter had served as a captain on
Russian-American Company ships from 1852 to 1863. Pierce and his wife were regular visitors to Finland since that time until their last visit in 2000. Pierce was appointed a position at
Queen's University,
Kingston, Ontario in 1959 and served there until 1988. He then took a position at
University of Alaska, Fairbanks from 1988 to 1998. During the latter tenure he had three homes, one in his native California, one in Kingston, and one in Fairbanks, the latter in the
Rainey-Skarland Cabin, which has been "a veritable who's who of northern researchers including
Ivar Skarland,
Helge Larsen,
J. Louis Giddings,
Frederica de Laguna and
Henry B. Collins and
Otto W. Geist". Some books, such as
Voyage to America, 1783–1785 by
Grigoriĭ Ivanovich Shelikhov (Alaska History no. 19, 1981), required decades of work. This book originated in 1958, with a letter received from
Hector Chevigny, author of the popular Alaskan historical works
Lost Empire, on
N. P. Rezanov, and
Lord of Alaska, on
Alexander Andreyevich Baranov. Chevigny had planned to write yet a third book on another notable person in the history of Russian America, Grigoriĭ Shelikhov, until loss of eyesight forced him to lay the project aside. Pierce described his cooperation with Chevigny in the following way: Another book that was a result of decades of work was Pierce's
Russian America, 1741–1867, A Biographical Dictionary, published in 1990 (Alaska History no. 33). In April 2001, he along with fellow anthropologist and historian and close colleague
Lydia T. Black, historians
Barbara Sweetland Smith,
John Middleton-Tidwell, and
Viktor Petrov (posthumous), was decorated by the
Russian Federation with the
Order of Friendship Medal, which they received at the
Russian consulate in San Francisco. "He was an absolute pioneer in Russian Alaska history, its premier archivist and one of its premier researchers and scholars", said Jennifer Collier, executive editor of the
University of Alaska Press. == The Limestone Press ==