"Entitled to Be Called an Artist": Landscape and Portrait Painter Frederick Piercy

Utah Historical Quarterly

Vol. 48, 1980, No. 1

"Entitled to Be Called an Artist": Landscape and Portrait Painter Frederick Piercy

BY WILFORD HILL LECHEMINANT

FREDERICK PIERCY'S MODEST PLACE in history rests on his forty-five drawings which originally appeared in 1855 in his book, Route from Liverpool to Great Salt Lake Valley, Illustrated, (Illustrated Route). These drawings are an important part of the pictorial record of America's westward expansion in the mid-nineteenth century before the completion of the transcontinental railroad. Yet, little has been known of Piercy aside from the six-month period recorded in his journal during his trip to Utah in 1853, the trip on which he made his historical sketches. This journal was published with his pictures on his return to England and is the best available insight into Piercy's personal qualities and interests. A little more of his life story can be pieced together from references to Piercy found in the diaries and letters of his Mormon contemporaries. Most of this information concerns the period of his life from his eighteenth year, when he joined the Mormon church, until he was "cut off" from the church nine years later for declining Brigham Young's request that he emigrate to Utah.

Born on January 27, 1830, Frederick Piercy was the eighth of nine children in the family of George and Deborah Adams Piercy. Both of his parents and all of their children were born in Portsea, Hampshire, England. Piercy was baptized a Mormon on March 23, 1848, and subsequently advanced in the church's priesthood. In 1849, after being ordained a priest, he himself baptized converts on at least three occasions. He was also secretary of the LDS London Conference in 1849 and 1850.

Piercy married Angelina Hawkins on September 15, 1849. They had eleven children. The first, Emily, was born in 1850; the last, Guy, was born in 1876. Their second child, George, was christened in the LDS London Conference on September 19, 1852. Thus, they had two children before Frederick's journey to Utah. Angelina, a few months older than Frederick, was nineteen when she was baptized a Mormon by John Banks on November 8, 1848. Members of her family had joined the church a month earlier.

Curtis E. Bolton, one of the first Mormon missionaries to France, described a meeting of six elders in the London home of a Sister Stayner on June 17, 1850. Frederick Piercy, one of these elders, was set apart to go on a mission to France by LDS Apostle John Taylor who was in Europe to establish the French Mission of the church. Eight days later Piercy left Angelina at home, pregnant with their first child, and went with Arthur Stayner to Paris. In the meantime, John Taylor engaged Protestant ministers in heated public "discussions" in Boulogne-sur-mer. The local newspaper, the Boulogne Interpreter, printed a transcript of these meetings from which the elders developed a proselyting tract. On July 19, 1850, Bolton joined Piercy and Stayner in Paris. The next day Bolton wrote, "Bro. John Taylor and I writing a pamphlet of his Boulogne discussions to be published in England. . . . Bro. Piercy sketching a lithographic likeness of Brother Taylor for the Pamphlet." In his next entry, September 1, Bolton said, "Fred Piercy left for London, having finished Elder Taylor's two likenesses." Also on September 1, Angelina gave birth to a daughter, Emily. Next, Bolton noted that John Taylor returned to England September 6, the same day that the records of the London Branch indicate Taylor officiated at the blessing of the Piercy infant.

At the time of Piercy's Utah journey, the LDS church's membership in the British Isles was about 30,000, more than the total population of Utah. Mormon leaders were urging as many Saints as possible to "hasten to Utah." Just over 2,300 Mormons emigrated from Europe in 1853 under the agency of Samuel W. Richards, then president of the British Mission and also publisher for the church in England.

The idea of creating a "collection of engravings of the most notable places" on the Mormon emigration route originated with Piercy and Samuel W. Richards early in 1853. Under an agreement with Richards to publish such engravings, Piercy traveled to America to make the sketches. He sailed from Liverpool February 5, 1853, a week after his twenty-third birthday.

Ferry and cottonwood trees at Council Bluffs, Iowa, in watercolor and pencil by Frederick Piercy. Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

On boarding the Jersey, Piercy identified two of his cabinmates as "young Joe H. and his brother, John." r> On the passenger list of the Jersey was John Hyde, Jr., age nineteen, and Joseph Hyde, age ten. Both were listed from the London Conference, as was Piercy, while most other passengers were from other conferences of the church. 7 Frederick Piercy and John Hyde, Jr., were friends. In 1856 Hyde left the church while en route to a church mission in Hawaii. The next year he published Mormonism: Its Leaders and Designs, an anti-Mormon book. 8 Hyde used copies of several of Piercy's pictures from the Illustrated Route in his book. However, these engravings are of poor quality and (fortunately for the artist) Hyde did not give Piercy credit for them.

At New Orleans Piercy left his shipboard companions and on his own traveled up the Mississippi River on paddle-wheel steamboats, stopping over at key landings along the way to draw scenes of the great river and its fledgling cities. After a side trip to Nauvoo and Carthage, Illinois, he went back to Saint Louis and took a steamboat up the Missouri River to Saint Joseph and then traveled by land to Council Bluffs. There he joined American Mormons from Potawattamie County, Iowa, who were organizing a wagon company for Utah. Piercy actively served as a mule skinner and at times handled an ox team. His opportunities to sketch the scenes and famous landmarks of the trail were sometimes hurried while the wagons moved on but were often taken during the usual delays of the road, such as those imposed by wagon repairs and by the crossing of streams and rivers. The scenes of the Mormon trail were essentially the same as those viewed by tens of thousands of non-Mormon settlers going to Oregon and California. Thus, Piercy's illustrations of this main road across the prairie and over the Wyoming Rockies relate to much of America's early growth west of the Mississippi River.

Fawn Brodie observes that Piercy's travel narrative "maintains a quiet detachment" from Mormon issues. During the parts of Piercy's journey when he was closely associated with LDS emigrants he makes no reference at all to the religious motives or the basic hopes and expectations of his Mormon comrades. His commentary on the Mormons is limited to factual observations of their mundane travel experiences. In contrast, Piercy is fascinated with people of the riverboats and riverfront towns. He reports interviews and anecdotes of the laborer, the deckhand, the black slave, and the innkeeper.

After making his sketches of the Mississippi River towns, Piercy had a happy reunion with "J. H " at Keokuk, where the Mormon emigrants were camped. Piercy and a group of eight or ten people left Keokuk for Nauvoo, twelve miles away. That John Hyde, Jr., may have been one of those with Piercy is implied by Hyde:

From Keokuk, I payed a visit to Nauvoo, in company with an estimable and talented gentleman, then a Mormon, but whom a view of Salt Lake doings has since caused to apostatize and return to England.

I spent several days conversing with J. Smith's mother, wife and family, and heard many charges against Brigham and His associates for actions in which, according to the Smiths, they had disobeyed the injunctions, contradicted the teachings, and maligned the memory of their late Prophet.

Piercy lodged at the Nauvoo Mansion, where Joseph Smith's family still lived and listened to the prophet's mother who "spoke very freely of her sons, and with tears in her eyes, and every other symptom of earnestness, vindicated their reputations for virtue and truth." Piercy drew portraits of her and two of her grandsons. Three and a half years later, in the fall of 1856, Erastus Snow and George A. Smith presented a copy of the Illustrated Route to the Smith family in Nauvoo, a gift of "the brethren in the Liverpool office."

The keeper of the Carthage jail was away during Piercy's visit, and a girl showed him through the building. His sketch of the room in which Joseph and Hyrum Smith were killed depicts a young lady pointing to the bullet holes in the wall. Her audience is a man in dress suit with his back to the viewer. He is holding what is likely an artist's portfolio under his left arm, suggesting that Piercy sketched himself into this scene.

In his last entry in the published journal, the young artist describes his arrival in Salt Lake City in an almost poetic word picture.

By the time we entered Great Salt Lake City darkness had enveloped it, shutting out from my straining eyes all details. I could see that the streets were broad and hear the refreshing sound of water rippling and gushing by the road side. Occasionally a tall house would loom up through the gloom and every now and then the cheerful lights came twinkling through the cottage windows — slight things to write about, but yet noticed with pleasure by one fresh from the plains. A happy meeting with relatives and a few moments of wakefulness ended the 9th of August, and also ends my hastily sketched and simple narrative.

Frederick presumably was greeted by his older sister, Syrina, and her husband, Thomas Biggs, who had joined the Mormon church in London, March 24, 1848, on her twenty-second birthday, and a day after Frederick was baptized. The Biggs family had emigrated to Utah and lived in Provo at the time of Piercy's visit to Utah.

Little information exists on Piercy's stay in Utah. He did sketch scenes of the area, two of which, the Utah Territorial House and the old Tabernacle, were to be in the Illustrated Route, according to the prospectus, but are not in the published work. Also, Brigham Young posed for Piercy who arranged for the sitting by letter.

It has long been my desire to have the honor of executing a Portrait of you, worthy of both yourself and me, and now that I am so near you, I cannot resist the temptation of making the request. I am certain that my motives are not mercenary, for I have decided that if I am not allowed to do it for the pleasure and honour of it, I will not do it at all.

On October 14, 1853, Samuel W. Richards sent a draft for seven pounds from Liverpool to Piercy in care of the church office in Saint Louis. This was sufficient to pay his way back to England. The only reference to his return to England notes that he was at sea en route home on December 27, 1853. He probably left Utah by mid-October and arrived in England in January 1854 if he sailed from the East Coast and not New Orleans.

After Piercy's return to England early in 1854, the scope of the project grew beyond the original plan. The collection of pictures was greater than intended, and Piercy's portraits of members of Joseph Smith's family and of Brigham Young led to the inclusion of portraits of other Mormon leaders taken from daguerreotypes. The landscapes, the portraits, and Piercy's well-written account of his journey were given to James Linforth to edit. Linforth was on the staff of the Millennial Star and a secretary in the mission office. He added lengthy footnotes on the people and places reported in Piercy's narrative "in order to render it not only ornamental and interesting, but really useful." Linforth also wrote travel instructions for emigrants and a detailed review of the Mormon emigration experience through 1855. The work became a magnificently illustrated travel guide to help gather the Mormon faithful of Europe to the mountain valleys of Utah.

On June 14, 1854, two weeks before his release as mission president, Samuel W. Richards "examined the manuscript of the first number of the Illustrated Route." The November 4, 1854, issue of the Millennial Star carried a notice that several hundred copies of Parts 1, 2, and 3 of the Illustrated Route were available to those who wanted only the history of the LDS emigration from Europe without the entire work. In addition, it noted, "We are able also to supply 300 new subscribers for the whole work."

The book was published in Liverpool in fifteen monthly parts from July 1854 to September 1855 and names as publisher Franklin D. Richards, successor to Samuel W. Richards. Those who planned to emigrate before all parts of the book were completed were advised to pay before departure and obtain the remaining parts in Utah. In November 1854 Samuel Richards, then in Utah, advertised in the Deseret News that the work could be ordered for delivery with the next spring's emigration.

On August 31 James Linforth wrote Brigham Young that he was sending him the first two parts of the book. The third part was not completed because of "disappointment of the artists (engravers') engaged." Linforth was still gathering information and asked Young to help him obtain biographical data from those whose portraits were to be in the book. Linforth also commented,

Your portrait, I understand from Brother Piercy, was approved by you and he informs me that you would like a number of copies sent out to you when engraved, which I shall feel a pleasure in connection with Brother Piercy in complying with. We shall at the close of the work furnish you with a suitable copy of it.

Two and a half years later Young expressed to Linforth, then in Utah, what may be a different opinion. He did not refer specifically to his own portrait, but he did say, "Some of the likenesses are so far from the truth, I think of having them engraved again from photographic likenesses sent on."

James Ferguson reviewed the Illustrated Route in the Millennial Star on April 5, 1856. He considered Piercy's sketch of Brigham Young "deficient" but added, "In the Prophet Brigham there is a peculiarity of expression, which defies alike chisel and pencil." Ferguson judged Piercy's portraits of the mother and sons of Joseph Smith as excellent and those of Willard Richards and the patriarchs, John Smith, Sr., and John Smith, Jr., as "faithful likenesses." He concluded, "Taking the sketches in aggregate, the work is superior to anything I have ever seen. It is. . . a vivid history of some of the most important epochs and sojournings of the Church, and will survive in truthfulness, any vicissitudes of time or chance." However, by 1855 the church was routing its emigrants to East Coast ports instead of New Orleans to avoid epidemic fevers associated with the Mississippi River. With this change the book may have lost some of its practical value. To what extent the book was used is uncertain. In 1857 Orson Pratt wrote Brigham Young from England, "There has been no sale whatever of the book for an entire year."

Nevertheless, since their original publication in the Illustrated Route, Piercy's pictures have been used in many histories of the American West, especially accounts of the Mormon pioneering epic. One authority considers the book to be "one of the basic sources of illustrated western Americana of the period." 24 However, Piercy himself is not well known or readily associated with his pictures. Sometimes his prints are used without credit being given him. He is acknowledged as the artist for only one of seven of his pictures used in B. H. Roberts's Comprehensive History of the Church. In some books, such as Nauvoo by Robert B. Flanders, credit for Piercy illustrations is given to the libraries supplying the pictures, while recognition of the artist is ignored.

The cultural importance of Route from Liverpool to Great Salt Lake Valley is also recognized by the publication of two later editions. A limited number of replicas of the original work were produced in 1959 by Bookcraft of Salt Lake City. A 1962 edition, edited by Fawn M. Brodie, was sponsored by the John Harvard Library as part of a project, noted on the book jacket, to republish a series of significant books of America's past and thereby "create a library that will, in time, cover the full range of cultural achievements in this country." The historic value of Piercy's drawings has been further enhanced by the unfortunate loss over the years of similar paintings by other artists of this period.

Although Piercy had just turned twenty-three when he embarked on his long journey to Utah, he was already an accomplished artist and a skilled engraver. In his narrative he states, "I thought myself entitled to be called an artist, because I had attempted to produce works of art for a number of years and I had lived by my profession." By that time, 1853, four Piercy works had been exhibited in London, two at the Royal Academy of Arts and two at the Suffolk Street Gallery. The first of these was shown at the academy when he was only eighteen years old, the same year he joined the LDS church.

What formal training in art Piercy may have received in his youth is not known. His father crafted model ships for the British Admiralty for his livelihood and apparently was an amateur painter. Upon his death in 1872 he bequeathed his pictures and painting supplies to Frederick. In evaluating original Piercy drawings now owned by the Missouri State Historical Society, Mary Powell says, "The engravings . . . show him to be well trained in the topographical manner of the mid-nineteenth century English landscape school." She concludes, "He draws his subject with conscientious attention to detail, but his feeling for natural beauty appears in the varied forms of clouds and trees and his emphasis on sparkling light which he achieves by touches of opaque white for highlights."

Original Piercy sketches are also found in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Jonathan Fairbanks, curator of American decorative arts for the museum, points out that for many of his scenic drawings Piercy used a camera lucida, a lens device that projects the scene onto the artist's paper and essentially allows him to trace the view. This technique gives his scenes a photographic accuracy and a greater scope than possible with the photographic cameras of that time.

Piercy's specialty is listed as portraits by the Royal Academy of Arts. Of the fourteen portraits in the Illustrated Route, Piercy drew five. The others were engraved from daguerreotypes or from portraits by other artists. In Nauvoo, Piercy drew from life the portraits of Joseph Smith's mother and two of his sons, Joseph and David Smith. Brigham Young sat for Piercy in Salt Lake City. John Taylor's portrait may be one of the two likenesses Taylor posed for while he and Piercy were in France in 1850.

The church had utilized Piercy's talents before he produced his Illustrated Route. Between 1849 and 1852 his portraits of Orson Pratt, John Taylor, and Franklin D. Richards were used with Mormon publications in England. In January 1853, just before Piercy's departure for Utah, a composite panel of individual portraits of the then-current general authorities of the LDS church was printed in Liverpool. Piercy is credited as the engraver of these portraits taken from daguerreotype photographs made in Utah by Marsena Cannon. In 1854, after his return from America, he did a portrait of Samuel W. Richards for the Millennial Star; and in 1856 he engraved an architectural perspective of the Salt Lake Temple for Truman O. Angell, the church architect.

Truman Angell tells of his dealings with Piercy over a six-month period ending January 9, 1857. Angell, Brigham Young's brother-in-law and the architect for the Salt Lake Temple, was sent to Europe by the church to recover from the demanding pressures of his work. He brought with him a daguerreotype copy of what he called a "temple plate," an architectural perspective of the Salt Lake Temple. Angell arrived in Liverpool July 14, 1856, and promptly asked the mission president, Franklin D. Richards, for help in having the "temple plate" engraved. Frederick Piercy was at the mission office and agreed to find an engraver for him. Piercy could not find the engraver he wanted and proposed to do the job himself for a fee of forty pounds. Angell agreed to this and subsequently met with Piercy from time to time until the engraving was completed in mid-November. Angell then had prints of the temple made and sold them in England and America.

Angell next engaged Piercy to make an engraving of Brigham Young's house to be used as Young's letterhead. It was relative to this that on December 8, 1856, Truman Angell and Elder John Kay went to Piercy's home where, Angell reported,

To our surprise we were cooly received or, we judged so. As we knocked on the door a child came and said Mr. Piercy was not at home. We asked for the woman. She came to the door and we entered but Oh, the cold feelings. But after informing her of our business, we left desiring that he should send us a line.

Angell did not identify the woman and child, who could well have been Angelina and five-year-old Emily. This "cold reception" may have been related to the circumstances surrounding the excommunication of Frederick and Angelina three months later on March 6, 1857.

Some of these circumstances couple Piercy with James Marsden and are found in the correspondence between Brigham Young and Orson Pratt, then mission president, in England. In October 1856 a letter of Brigham Young began with a reference to "a list of persons not coming to Utah, who were sent for and reasons why." Near the end of this lengthy letter he added, "Brother Marsden's labors are not needed in Europe, let him, and also Frederick Piercy come immediately to Zion or be cut off from the Church and give no countenance to F. Piercy's publication of his travels." In January 1857 Pratt responded that James Marsden was planning to go to the valley without his wife and children, who refused to go with him. However, in his letter of April 2, 1857, Pratt told Young, "James Marsden and Fred Piercy have declined going to the Valley and have been cut off from the Church." This report immediately followed Pratt's brief statement that the church's "reformation program is going well in Europe and should result in much good. In the Millennial Star, April 18, 1857, appeared an explanation that Brigham Young had requested Piercy and Marsden to come to Utah and that these "brethren" had been excommunicated for failure to comply with "this requisition of the First Presidency . . .and for other transgressions." Brigham Young's next letter to Orson Pratt, May 29, 1857, asserted, "Bros. Marsden and Piercy have not disappointed us from what we have seen and learned of them." This comment was associated with a reference to the LDS reformation and followed by a theological discourse on obedience to the gospel.

James Linforth left England for Utah with Franklin D. Richards in July 1856. They stopped in New York City where John Taylor introduced them to the editor of Leslie's Illustrated Paper who was reproducing some of Piercy's engravings from the Illustrated Route for his periodical. In Utah Linforth met with Brigham Young who agreed to purchase the engraved plates and the copyright to the Illustrated Route for 200 pounds. He confirmed this decision in a letter to Linforth on March 14, 1857, and two weeks later, April 1, Brigham Young wrote Orson Pratt regarding the purchase:

You will please credit James Linforth for 100 pounds and charge this office, this is for the payment of the plates, blocks, etc., belonging to James Linforth and Frederick Piercy. I enclose a document to which you will please get the signature of F. Piercy and upon his depositing the plates and all matters pertaining to the said work published by Piercy and Linforth, then you will pay him 100 pounds, the balance of said purchase of copyright, etc., and for this office also, and return to me said paper. You will deposit the plates, blocks, etc., pertaining to this work in a place of safety till we give you further instructions in reference to them.

Piercy did not receive the entire 100 pounds Brigham Young had agreed to pay him. Unaware of Young's purchase of the rights to the book, Piercy had negotiated independently with Orson Pratt and reluctantly had accepted 75 pounds for his part. When he learned the entire story from Linforth, he wrote Orson Pratt, June 23, 1857, and also sent a copy to Brigham Young saying, "Herewith I send you a correct copy of a letter addressed by me to Orson Pratt. It would be a gratification to me to know, and let others know, that you do not countenance the dishonourable transaction detailed in it." His letter to Pratt stated:

Sometime ago I wrote you offering the whole of my share in the Route to Salt Lake Valley Illustrated for 100 pounds. Upon your declining to purchase and informing me that you had received orders from the Valley to give no encouragement to the book and also publishing the same in the Star, I offered you the half relating to the Church for 50 pounds. This you also refused to buy.

On the 8th of June (after a mail had come in from GSL) you wrote me saying that you had reconsidered my proposition of May 23 and offered me 50 pounds for the whole. Of course, I felt certain that you had not reconsidered it but that Brigham had instructed you to buy. But I had no proof of this, and therefore foolishly said that you should have it for 75 pounds. In your reply you agreed to purchase for that sum but said, "I made you the offer in order to pressure Linforth's interests." Now sir I am prepared to show you that you have not reconsidered my proposition and that no sudden regard for Linforth's interest impelled you to go in direct opposition to Brigham's councils and your obvious intention in the Star.

My proof is the following contract from a letter of James Linforth's dated March 29 and sent from your office yesterday.

This letter continued with a copy of Brigham Young's agreement with Linforth and a copy of Linforth's letter advising Piercy that he had executed a deed of transfer to Brigham Young for his part in the book. Linforth also congratulated Piercy on the settlement, believing Piercy had deservedly received 100 pounds for his part and for his "labours performed and risk run ... in getting up the work." Piercy concluded:

This sentiment is like Linforth and is doubtless shared by Governor Young and ought I think to have had some weight with you. I will not say more here about this letter of Linforth's being kept back until after I had signed a copy of the agreement sent with it from the Valley. Nor will I trouble you with any reflections on the above. All that I have to say on the subject now is that unless instant reparation is made and the 25 pounds are handed over to me, I shall send a copy of this to Governor Young and insert it in the Times and Liverpool papers as an advertisement, feeling sure that the story will excite in the minds of all honest men the deepest indignation.

Brigham Young's copy of Piercy's letter to Orson Pratt was received in Salt Lake City June 3, 1858, almost a year later. Pratt received Piercy's letter within four days and promptly wrote Young on June 27, 1857:

Frederick Piercy has apostatized, and is filled with bitterness against the Church. He has several times solicited me to purchase the Route property plates, etc. and finally offered me his interest for 50 pounds but I declined — on receipt of your letter I wrote him accepting his offer, he then refused to take it but offered to take 75 pounds. I finally closed the bargain with him at that price, and have received the property with expenses of Stamp freight. . . . Since then I have received a very impudent, saucy, and threatening letter from him in which he demands 25 pounds more, on the ground that Linforth has written him that you would give 100 pounds. There is nothing of any value at all except the plates. All the complete volumes already belonged to the Church, but there has been no sale for them whatever for the last year — On the whole I think, more has already been paid for the property than it is worth. Still if you desire it, after knowing all the circumstances, I am ready and willing to pay Piercy whatever additional sum you shall say.

Brigham Young's next letter to Orson Pratt, August 12, 1857, contained no instructions on settling with Piercy. By then Young had received word that a United States Army was marching to Utah, and he was preoccupied with this problem. Thus, five months after Piercy's excommunication for not coming to Utah, Young instructed Orson Pratt to stop the Mormon emigration to the United States and send all of the American missionaries home. Piercy apparently did not receive the final 25 pounds.

Insight into Piercy's activities after he left the church is largely limited to two lists of his exhibited art. He had a lifetime total of twelve works exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts and nine at the Suffolk Street Gallery. The most pictures he exhibited in any one year were five, in 1857, the year of his excommunication. He had only nine pictures exhibited after 1857. He last exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1880 and at the Suffolk Street Gallery in 1882-83. To put Piercy's contributions in perspective, one must appreciate that between 1824 and 1893, some 7,000 artists exhibited more than 110,000 pictures at the Suffolk Street Gallery.

From 1859 to 1862 Piercy's address was H.M.S. Britannia, Portsmouth. Since he is not on any of the personnel lists of the Britannia at this time, he may have been attached to the newly commissioned naval training ship as a civilian artist or teacher. During much of the 1870s Piercy lived next door to the National Gallery and a block from the Suffolk Street Gallery. His future father-in-law, Ralph Nicholson Wornum, was curator of the National Gallery for twenty-two years and wrote several scholarly books on art. The artist was a witness to his will in 1874. Wornum died in 1877 and Angelina Piercy died August 30, 1881. On March 17, 1884, in Saint Peter's Church, Hampstead Parish, Piercy married Catherine Agnes Wornum, also an artist. Piercy reportedly suffered from paralysis during thelast ten years of his life. Nevertheless, he sired a son, Selden, who was born in 1886. Piercy died June 10, 1891, in London.

Most of Piercy's original drawings of his journey to Utah in 1853 were acquired for American collections in 1948 and 1949. These may have been in Selden's possession; he died August 16, 1948. Piercy portraits of Disraeli, Adm. James Dundas, and Dr. J. R. Bennett are extant in England. The whereabouts of his other "English" drawings are not known to major art dealers. Locating these drawings and the engravings bought by Brigham Young would be valuable in more completely restoring Piercy's legacy of art. Regardless, Frederick Piercy's Route from Liverpool to Great Salt Lake Valley continues to be a valuable pictorial source and record of the pioneer story of western America.

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