Pearce, David

Born: 1814-09-23 Connecticut

Died: 1885-08-20 Danbury, Connecticut

Flourished: Saint Louis, Missouri

David Pearce, hat manufacturer and retailer, was based in the hat-making center of Danbury in his native Connecticut but operated a wholesale hat business in St. Louis from at least 1845 until about 1861. He conducted business throughout the St. Louis region and advertised extensively in Illinois newspapers. In addition to operating on his own, in 1851 and 1852 Pearce partnered with Charles Benedict of Danbury in the St. Louis-based hat firm of David Pearce & Company. Abraham Lincoln was engaged by Pearce to pursue unpaid promissory notes in Sangamon County at least twice in the mid-1850s. At the time of the 1860 census, Pearce owned real estate valued at $10,000 and possessed $1,000 in personal property. He married Caroline Sellick (Selleck) in 1838 and the pair had four children.

Connecticut, U.S., Town Marriage Records, pre-1870 (Barbour Collection), 21 November 1838, Danbury (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2006); Green’s St. Louis Directory for 1845 (St. Louis: James Green, 1844), 138; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Danbury, Fairfield County, CT, 111; The Missouri Whig (Palmyra), 6 March 1851, 3:3; The Belleville Advocate (IL), 17 March 1852, 3:5; The Alton Telegraph (IL), 9 April 1852, 4:5; Illinois Daily Journal (Springfield), 10 March 1854, 3:2; The Daily Republican (Rock Island, IL), 4 September 1855, 3:1; For legal cases involving Lincoln, search Participant, “Pearce, David,” Martha L. Benner and Cullom Davis et al., eds., The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln: Complete Documentary Edition, 2d edition (Springfield: Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, 2009), http://www.lawpracticeofabrahamlincoln.org; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Danbury, Fairfield County, CT, 6; W. H. Francis, History of the Hatting Trade in Danbury, Conn. (Danbury: H. & L. Osborne, 1860), 31; Daily Missouri Republican (St. Louis), 4 June 1861, 1:2; Connecticut, U.S., Hale Collection of Cemetery Inscriptions and Newspaper Notices, 1629-1934 (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2012); Gravestone, Wooster Cemetery, Danbury, CT.