Abel Head "Shanghai" Pierce, born June 29, 1834, in Little Compton, Rhode Island, was a Texas, United States, rancher. He was a direct descendant of John Alden and Priscilla Mullins, with nine generations in between.[1] He was related to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow as well as a president of the United States, Franklin Pierce. Thomas Wentworth Pierce, builder of the Southern Pacific Railroad in Texas, was also a relative of Mr. Pierce.[2] At the age of nineteen, "Shanghai" stowed away on a ship in the New York harbor. He worked for his passage and arrived in Indianola, Texas, five months later without money or a job. He went to work for W. B. Grimes as a ranch hand. By shrewdness, hard work, and rugged determination he became an authority on cattle while working for Grimes.[3] How Abel Head Pierce acquired the name "Shanghai" is a matter of speculation. J. Frank Dobie reported that it was due to Pierce's resemblance to a banty Shanghai rooster; long-legged and short-panted. Pierce died o)n December 26, 1900.[4] Pierce spent some time in Kansas , for health reasons. It seems that despite Pierce's public warnings , he came upon 4 men skinning a Pierce heifer. The four men were hanged from a suitable tree , and the word leaked out. During Reconstruction days,the Texas Courts could not be predicted. So Pierce went to Abilene Kansas until the situation cooled.
source: SHANGHAI PIERCE: A FAIR LIKENESS , 1953 , University of Oklahoma Press(from memory)
Ted de Corsia played Pierce in the film Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.