Augustus Baker Peirce
American traveller in Australia
Augustus Baker Peirce also known as Gus Pierce (7 October 1840 – 1919), was an American sailor, actor, raconteur and artist in several mediums, who spent some 10 years in Australia. His autobiography Knocking About was accepted by some critics as a largely true, if flawed, account of his travels and experiences.
Although he generally used the spelling "Pierce" in Australia, his birth name "Peirce" has been used here, except in relation to his wife and sons, who took the name "Pierce".
History
Gus Peirce was born in West Medford, Massachusetts the son either of merchant George A. Peirce, and Jane Peirce, née Nye or Major Moses Peirce and Mehitable [sic] Peirce, née Nye. He may have had an early career with the US Navy and was a sailor on the Oriental (Capt. Osgood) which left New York Harbor on 27 September 1859 and arrived at Port Phillip on 12 January 1860, when he deserted ship by swimming ashore. He embarked on various occupations: selling meat pies for George Millbank at New Inglewood; selling Frank Weston's "Wizard Oil" in Dunolly; landscape painting in Melbourne; working as photographer's assistant for Batchelder and O'Neill of Salem, Massachusetts and scenery painting for the Lyceum Theatre. He went snake hunting with Joseph Shires (ca.1822 – 16 March 1892), the famous inventor of a snake-bite cure. He travelled by Murray steamboat to Wentworth, where he acted as bum bailiff for "the White Chinaman" John Egge against a family of acrobats.
Steamboats
He was introduced to life on the Murray by fellow-Americans Alexander Sinclair Murray and Peleg Whitford Jackson, for whom he compiled a strip-map of the river from Albury to Goolwa around 1863.
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This entry incorporates text from “Augustus Baker Peirce” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.