Hunt's Merchants' Magazine and Commercial Review

THOMAS HANDASYD PERKINS was born in Boston, December 15, 1764, and named for his maternal grandfather, Thomas Handasyd Peck, who dealt largely in furs and the importation of hats. His father was a merchant, who died in middle age, leaving a widow and eight children, three sons and five daughters, most of them very young. She was a woman of excellent principles and remarkable energy, and undertook the heavy charge thus devolved upon her with deep solicitude, (as appeared from a subsequent reference of her own to this passage of her life,) but with firmness and ability. She appears to have assumed some part of the business of her husband, who had been connected with George Erving, one of the principal merchants in the town. Letters from Holland are remembered which were addressed to her as Mr. Elizabeth Perkins; and when her eldest son, having attained the age of manhood, went some years afteward to the Island of St. Domingo, where he established himself, he sailed from Boston in a ship, the Beaver, of which his mother was part owner, and which had been chartered to the French government to transport part of their cavalry to Cape Francois.

This estimable lady discharged her duties successfully, rearing her children with such advantages as fitted them for stations of responsibility, which they afterward filled with credit to themselves and to her; and at the same time taking an active part herself with the charitable associations of the town, which is shown by acknowledgments found among her papers and in records of her services as treasurer and otherwise, from those with whom she acted.

On her decease in 1807, it was voted "that the officers of the Boston Female Asylum wear a badge of mourning for the term of seventy-one days," (corresponding probably to the years of her life,) " in token of their high consideration and respect for the virtues of the deceased, and of their grateful and affectionate sense of her liberal and essential patronage as a founder and friend of the institution." She is still remembered by a few gentlemen, sons of her former neighbors and associates, as an excellent friend, of active benevolence, and as a lady of dignified, but frank and cordial manners.

Numerous descendants of hers, under various names, now move in different walks of life in the United States, in Europe, and Asia, and not a few of them distinguished for prosperity and the wise use of wealth, and for intelligence and refinement, as well as for the sound principles which she inculcated on all.

The success of several of the branches of her family was essentially promoted by the energy and warm-hearted sympathy of the subject of this memoir, who was the second son, only six years of age at the death of his father in 1771. Some notice of one, who was himself an eminent merchant, and in reference to whom it may be said that both his father and mother were merchants, seems to find an appropriate place in a commercial magazine.

His father lived in King-street, now State-street, where the conflict took place between the citizens and the troops, called afterwards the "Boston massacre;" and though he was little more than five years old at that time, the sight of the dead bodies and of the blood, frozen the next day on the street, made an impression on his mind that was never obliterated. The troops being quartered near there, many of the officers were afterwards visitors in his mother's family.

At about seven years of age he was put under the care of a clergyman of great respectability at Middleborough, about thirty miles from Boston, and was afterwards at school in Boston, until intercourse with the country being stopped, his mother retired with her family to Barnstable, where she resided till the town was evacuated by the enemy. His grandfather, Mr. Peck, remained in Boston through the siege, but was near being sent home to be tried as a rebel for freedom of speech.

While living with his mother at Barnstable, both his legs were broken by an unlucky accident, as he was returning from an excursion in the woods; and though the limbs were well set, and he soon recovered the use of them, he occasionally felt the effect of the injury when the weather was bad, even in advanced age. There, too, he formed an early and close friendship, that remained unbroken for nearly eighty years, until terminated by death, with one of his companions whom he had saved from drowning the late distinguished lawyer and statesman, Harrison Gray Otis, nephew of the revolutionary patriot.

Some time after the return of the family to town, his mother decided on giving him a collegiate education, and he was sent, with other boys from Boston-one of whom was the Hon. John Welles, now the oldest living graduate of Harvard-to an instructor at Hingham, the Rev. Mr. Shute, noted for his success in preparing lads for college. After residing there three years, and being prepared for Cambridge, he was so reluctant to enter college, that it was decided that he should go into a counting-house. He was strongly inclined by temperament to active life. Vigorous and bold,

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Hunt's Merchants' Magazine and Commercial Review, Volumen33