![\"charlesarchibaldpearce\"](\"http:\/\/ss.sites.mtu.edu\/cca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/pc_CharlesArchibaldPearce.jpg\")
<\/a>Pearce was born on May 10, 1870, in Maryland.1<\/sup>\u00a0His father was Stephen Theodore Pearce, who was a mining superintendent, and his mother was Emma Jane Bourne, who was originally from Canada. Pearce was the youngest of seven children, two of whom had died in childhood.2<\/sup><\/p>\n By 1881, before Pearce was even a teenager, his father had died of smallpox, and the family moved to Canada.3<\/sup>\u00a0Pearce was educated at the Academy in Sherbrooke, Quebec, and later went to school at Bishops College School in Lennoxville, Quebec, where his family lived at that time.4<\/sup>\u00a0It is not known if he had any formal schooling as an architect, but more than likely he worked for a time as an apprentice to an architect before starting his own business.5<\/sup>\u00a0By 1893, at the age of 23, he was working as a draftsman\/architect for Draughting Services Reg’d of Montreal.6<\/sup><\/p>\n Sometime around 1893 Pearce moved to the Houghton-Hancock area, and by 1899 had an office in the Scott Block of Hancock where he advertised and worked as an architect. See Table 1 for a summary of directory listings for Pearce. Pearce designed several buildings in the area, including his mother\u2019s house in East Hancock. More detailed descriptions of his Houghton County buildings are listed below. In addition to those, he also designed the now-demolished Finnish Apostolic Lutheran Church on Franklin St., near Scott, in Hancock, in 1897.<\/p>\n His architecture business seems to have been well established when he married Nina Collins, a school teacher from Houghton, on February 19, 1901.7<\/sup>\u00a0Their first two children were born in Hancock: Bourne Thornthwaite in 1902 and Enid Doris in 1903.8<\/sup>Pearce then moved his family to the Montreal area in Quebec, Canada, where they had three more children, Hugh Warren in 1907, Stephen Collins in 1909, and David Archibald in 1920.<\/p>\n While in Montreal, Pearce worked as an \u201cArchitectural Draftsman\u201d for the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR). One of the projects he worked on for CPR was designing the kitchens in the CP hotels Chateau Frontenac in Quebec City, Quebec, and Banff Springs Hotel in Banff, Alberta.9<\/sup>\u00a0Pearce also designed a bas relief WWI Memorial for the CPR, which is still hanging in many of the CPR stations and offices, including Union Station in Toronto. Pearce also designed houses when he lived in Montreal, similar in style to his mother\u2019s house that he designed in East Hancock. Several were built in Westmount, Montreal.<\/p>\n In his free time Pearce enjoyed playing the banjo and ocarina.10<\/sup>\u00a0Eventually he developed Parkinson\u2019s disease and had to retired from CPR sometime in the late 1920s or early 1930s due to his health. He died in 1944 in Montreal at the age of 74.11<\/sup><\/p>\n Houghton Co. directory and census listings for C.A. Pearce<\/p>\n<\/a>