Charlie W. Pierce

Arriving in 1872, Pierce was a community leader in banking, seamanship, the postal service, and author of the sentinel book on early South Florida life.

Hannibal Pierce sold the boat and the family went by train and steamer to Sand Point (Titusville, Florida).

After serving at the Jupiter Lighthouse for a year, Hannibal Pierce homesteaded a large portion of Hypoluxo Island, located in the Lake Worth Lagoon.

The United States federal government built five Houses of Refuge in Florida to care for shipwrecked sailors.

[3] Pierce began piloting boats through the inland route to Titusville, the main point of trade on the lower Florida east coast at that time.

In 1888, he became one of the famed "Barefoot Mailmen" (a term he was the first to use, in 1939) who walked the beaches and crossed the rivers between Hypoluxo and Miami, a trek of over 60 miles (97 km).

[6] Pierce married Yallahs Lizette Wallack on February 26, 1896, in Lemon City, Florida, north of Miami.

[7] They had one son, Charles Leon "Chuck" Pierce, the first boy of European descent born in Boynton Beach.

In the 1960s, Judge James R. Knott, a prominent Palm Beach County historian, sought the help of Florida Atlantic University history professor Dr. Donald Walter Curl.

His plaque is at the Oyer Building (site of the old Boynton Beach Post Office), 523–525 East Ocean Avenue, Boynton Beach, Florida[13] In 2008, Pierce's great-grand nephew Harvey Oyer III, published a children's book based on Pierce's early Florida adventures.