He entered Harvard College in 1855 and graduated four years later with an A.B., continuing to study there at graduate level for a year. By this stage his father, Benjamin Peirce, was working for the United States Coast Survey and Charles began to undertake occasional work for the Coast Survey. In particular he worked for them beginning on 1 July 1859. In 1861 he entered the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard, where again his father played an important role, and here he seems to have shone much more than in his undergraduate years. He received a Master's degree from Harvard in 1862 and then a Sc.B. with distinction from the Lawrence Scientific School in 1863. On 16 October of that year he married Harriet Melusina Fay who came from a leading Cambridge family and was an active feminist campaigner.