Peter Stevens "Pierce" Hamilton was born on January 3, 1826, in Brookfield, Colchester, Nova Scotia.

He was a lawyer, journalist, author, and office holder. He received his education in Wolfville, at Horton Academy and Acadia College. In 1852, he was admitted to the bar of Nova Scotia and established a law practice in Halifax. As early as 1846 he contributed articles to the Halifax Morning Post & Parliamentary Reporter. In 1852, he abandoned his law practice and became an editor of the Acadian Recorder, a position he held until 1861. In 1853, he became secretary-treasurer of the Nova Scotia Electric Telegraph Company and local agent for the New York Associated Press, responsible for decoding and transmitting news dispatches from Europe to New York. In 1855, he published “Observations upon a Union of the Colonies of British North America”. The pamphlet, widely circulated at home and abroad, was also reprinted in the Quebec Gazette and the Anglo-American Magazine of Toronto. In 1858, as a supporter of confederation, he spent three months travelling in the northeastern United States and in Upper and Lower Canada, interviewing leading political figures. As a reporter for the Acadian Recorder in Ottawa in the early 1870s, he became a member of the parliamentary press gallery and was named vice-president of the Canadian Press Association. In 1878, he published "The Feast of Saint Anne and Other Poems", which appeared under the name Pierce Stevens Hamilton. In 1899, six years after Hamilton’s death, a group of friends erected a monument to his memory in Camp Hill Cemetery, Halifax.

In 1849, he married Anne Amelia Brown (1829–1901). He died on February 22, 1893, in Halifax, Nova Scotia.