From collection Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Company Collection
LB2007.1.72022
Peirce School Thanks to a strangely worded will left by 27 year-old Lena (Peirce) Frederick, who died in 1890 of kidney failure, entitling the city to use the proceeds of from the sale of the Hayford Block after 1913 (when her husband would turn 55), to finance the construction of a new school, the Peirce Elementary School was built in 1915. Lena's father, shipbuilder and trader David Peirce's home on High Street became the first Waldo County General Hospital. Although it was felt by many that there was greater need for a new high school, Charles Frederick, now the trustee of the Peirce fund was against putting the money toward the construction of a new high school and wanted to use the funds to replace the aging South Primary School, built in 1846, with one that would be a finer tribute to his prematurely deceased wife and her family.
