Cattle king Shanghai Pierce, after a grand tour of Europe in 1891, commissioned San Antonio monument maker and granite contractor Frank Teich to produce this grave marker, erected nine years before Pierce's death. Teich produced a life-sized marble standing figure of Pierce, supported on a tiered granite obelisk. Hawley Cemetery had, since 1852, been the cemetery of Deming's Bridge on the Trespalacios River, the community that preceded Blessing. Because various Pierce family members were buried here by the time Blessing was started, the cemetery continued to be maintained even as evidence of Deming's Bridge disappeared. J. E. Pierce and his descendants, including architect Abel B. Pierce Jr., are buried at Hawley Cemetery in a family plot next to that of Shanghai Pierce.