Now It's Lucy's Turn - a Name Proposal for Pierce School

Posted: 10/5/2026 5:45 pm

The husband was honored & the brother was honored

- Now it’s Lucy’s Turn!! - 

Hello Brookline neighbor,

We are writing from Brookline Village to share our proposal to give the new, improved Pierce School…a new, improved name! 

Our proposal involves changing the school’s name to: “The John and Lucy Pierce School.” This proposal is all about a much-deserved addition, not a subtraction.

The Rev. John Pierce gave the town decades of service through his ministry at the First Parish Church and by leading the Brookline school committee. He deserves to be honored. We believe that his wife Lucy Pierce is equally deserving of the highest honors the town can bestow. 

Lucy was a committed abolitionist more than a decade before most of the town itself came over that view. On this issue, she and (later) her children were actually more ardent than her husband. Moreover, she rejected the deeply-rooted conventional idea that a woman’s “proper sphere” prohibited her from speaking out on public issues. Her defiance of that social taboo took courage, and she became an outspoken town leader on the anti-slavery issue. If you are a woman who now feels free to participate in town affairs, that’s because women like Lucy Pierce blazed the trail. These links will take you to Brookline Historical Society articles with more information about John, Lucy, and local abolitionism: 

https://brooklinehistoricalsociety.org/newsletters/1993Fall.pdf

https://brooklinehistoricalsociety.org/history/publications/seriesTwo/18.html

https://brooklinehistoricalsociety.org/history/proceedings/1949/Philbrick.html

For more information and to sign the petition, visit this link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tsrFGSubI92EnVZZydFa9juXwcGvKg7kXTb447BVeXU/edit?tab=t.0 

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