Before his public service career, he attended Brown University and Princeton Theological Seminary, and became an ordained minister of the Congregational Church.

After his superintendency, he was elected to the state legislature and served on Michigan's 1850 constitutional convention before retiring to his farm outside Ypsilanti for the last thirty years of his life.

[2] His father died when he was young, and his lack of money limited his education;[2] By age 20, Pierce committed himself to 'self-education'.

[1] His objectives were many and far-reaching: he coordinated the state's elementary schools, created state school districts with individual libraries, set professional qualifications for teachers, sold public land for public education, and planned the creation of the University of Michigan.

[1] Pierce's vision and work combined common schools with a public university, which the Brown exhibit describes as an achievement that "surpass[es] Mann's in breadth and comprehensiveness".