Augustus F. Pierce ( 1877 – January 16, 1934) was an American politician who served as the

Tammany Hall Tammany Hall, also known as the Society of St. Tammany, the Sons of St. Tammany, or the Columbian Order, was an American political organization founded in 1786 and incorporated on May 12, 1789, as the Tammany Society. It became the main local ...

leader of

the Bronx The Bronx ( ) is the northernmost of the five Boroughs of New York City, boroughs of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. It shares a land border with Westchester County, New York, West ...

's 8th assembly district in New York City until his death in 1934. An employee of the city since 1907, at the time of his death he worked for the Department of Sanitation.

Early life and family

Augustus F. Pierce was born c. 1877 to Franklin and Jane Pierce (née McGinnis) in New York. In the

1910 United States Census The 1910 United States census, conducted by the Census Bureau on April 15, 1910, determined the resident population of the United States to be 92,228,496, an increase of 21 percent over the 76,212,168 persons enumerated during the 1900 census ...

he was listed as married to Loretta Pierce (b. 1888) and had an eight-year-old son; the family resided in

Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...

Political career

Pierce campaigned for John P. O'Brien in the 1933 mayoral election in the Bronx. Fiorello H. La Guardia, an enemy of Tammany Hall, won that election, which took place on November 7, but opponents of La Guardia still had a reasonable chance to block his measures in the

Board of Aldermen An alderman is a member of a municipal assembly or council in many jurisdictions founded upon English law with similar officials existing in the Netherlands ( wethouder) and Belgium ( schepen). The term may be titular, denoting a high-ranking mem ...

. Bronx alderman Alford J. Williams died in December 1933, and the Board convened on January 16, 1934, to elect his successor. Pierce was in the audience of the meeting to support Thomas Dolen, the Tammany Hall leader of the borough. John S. McGinley, a member of the Recovery Party and ally of La Guardia's, was elected as Williams's successor by a vote of 42 to 19, thus stripping Tammany Hall of control of the Board which it had had since consolidation in 1896. This vote was unexpected and made possible by the defections of 14 aldermen allied with Tammany Hall's citywide leader John F. Curry and 21 allied with Curry's Brooklyn ally John H. McCooey. Minutes after the vote Pierce collapsed from a heart attack in the chambers of the Board, and minutes later was pronounced dead at the scene. His death was directly attributed to the vote result. He was buried in the Gates of Heaven Cemetery. McCooey died less than a week after Pierce; these deaths spelled the end of Curry's hold on Tammany Hall, and of Tammany Hall's hold of the city.

James Farley James Aloysius Farley (May 30, 1888 – June 9, 1976) was an American politician who simultaneously served as chairman of the New York State Democratic Committee, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and United States Postmaster Gener ...

, the Democratic leader of New York state, announced his support of La Guardia to Democratic U.S. President

Franklin D. Roosevelt Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), also known as FDR, was the 32nd president of the United States, serving from 1933 until his death in 1945. He is the longest-serving U.S. president, and the only one to have served ...

, giving La Guardia access to federal funding and consolidating his control over the city.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pierce, Augustus Politicians from the Bronx 1870s births 1934 deaths New York (state) Democrats