From time to time Pierre was also known as Peter or Petrus. He was born at Lyons in France around 1857 and his father Etienne was a weaver. Pierre immigrated to Wales sometime in the 1870s. On the day of the 1881 census he was lodging in Newport with soon-to-be parents-in-law Otho and Mary Ann STEED and their youngest daughter Edith who was 13 years old and still at school. He was in love with Edith's 19 year old sister Rose who was visiting married sister Annette and husband George COOKE in London.

Pierre married Rose at Newport in 1882. Besides Paul Henry who was born in 1883, they had two other children: Annette Edith (1890) and Ninetta (1892). Both were students of music. Ninetta, who was known as Nina, played viola and violin with the Cardiff Ensemble and gave concerts of chamber music which were broadcast on the radio in the 1930s. She never married and retired to Brighton where she died in 1968. Annette, known as Nettie, never married and lived with her parents at 144 Penylan Road Cardiff. Pierre died at the end of January 1931 and Nettie died 5 weeks later. Mother Rose lived on in the family home until her death in 1942.

Pierre started work as a clerk and by 1895 he had developed a business as a coal shipper. His office was in Cardiff docks in the Exchange, Mountstuart Square.