[4] In an 1841 letter to Henry Barnard where he described his work in the Lexington Normal School, Peirce wrote: You ask for a full account of my manner of instruction in the art of Teaching.

1st, by question and answer; 2nd, by conversation; 3rd, by calling on one, two, three, more or less, to give an analysis of the whole subject contained in the lesson, and 4th, by requiring written analyses in which the ideas of the author are stated in the language of the pupil.

The students understand that, at all the recitations, they are at perfect liberty to suggest queries, doubts, opinions.

[5]The experimental normal school in Lexington, which was to evolve into today's Framingham State University, began on a modest note with only three students, but it had grown to 42 by July 1842, when ill health forced Peirce to resign his position there and return to Nantucket.

[1] Soon after leaving his post at the normal school, Peirce left for Europe where he was a delegate to the third International Peace Congress in 1849 and toured the continent and England before returning to West Newton.

After the normal school moved to Framingham in 1853, the academy took over its buildings which were located on Washington Street, where the First Unitarian Society in Newton now stands.

Peirce died on April 5, 1860, in West Newton and is buried in Section TT, Lot 148 in Prospect Hill Cemetery in Nantucket.