James Handasyd Perkins

Background

He was born on July 31, 1810 in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, the youngest of the six children of Samuel G. and Barbara (Higginson) Perkins and a descendant of Edmund Perkins who emigrated to New England in 1650.

Education

He attended boarding schools at Waltham and Lancaster, Massachussets, the Phillips Academy at Exeter, and the Round Hill School at Northampton. At the latter school he displayed some superiority in modern languages, and his letters of those years show a poetical, slightly cynical, and highly introspective cast of mind.

Career

At eighteen he entered as a clerk the business founded by his uncles Thomas H. and James Perkins, prominent importers and philanthropists. In 1831 he was sent on a trip for his firm to England and the West Indies; but on his return he abandoned a business career as opposed to his tastes, health, and ethical ideals, and removed to Cincinnati with the expectation of following those horticultural pursuits to which his father had long been devoted.

The influence of his former teacher, Judge Walker, now prominent in the Cincinnati bar, caused him to read law; he was admitted to the bar in 1834. His health, which was not robust, was unsuited to sedentary occupations, and he was repelled by practices and attitudes of his profession which offended his sensitive ethical apprehensions. He therefore never devoted himself fully to the practice of the law, but drifted into literary pursuits.

Upon his first arrival at Cincinnati he had formed a connection with James Hall's Western Monthly Magazine, newly established in that city, which he maintained for about three years, while he was reading law, writing articles, sketches, and poems for the North American Review, the New York Review, the Massachusetts Quarterly, and other periodicals, and delivering lyceum lectures.

He became editor of the Saturday Evening Chronicle, which in 1835 he purchased and merged with the Cincinnati Mirror, edited by William D. Gallagher and Thomas H. Shreve. Perkins shared the editorial work of these men for six months, until the failure of their publisher in 1835.

In 1836 he tried gardening and grain-milling at Pomeroy, Ohio, but gave that up to establish himself the next year as a gardener in the edge of Cincinnati. Here he continued writing, publishing in 1838 his Digest of the Constitutional Opinions of Chief Justice John Marshall. He was connected with the Western Messenger, an important Unitarian monthly, from its beginning in 1835, and was one of its editors in 1839.

The First Congregational Society of Cincinnati, a Unitarian body, established him in 1838 as minister at large, in which capacity he continued until the end of his life to work with the poor of Cincinnati. He was president of the Cincinnati Relief Union from its organization in 1841 until his death. He also conducted a small school for girls.

In 1841 Perkins succeeded his cousin William Henry Channing, his childhood companion and later his biographer, as minister of the First Congregational Society of Cincinnati. In 1849, under the reaction from an emotional stress caused by the supposed loss and the recovery of his two sons, he committed suicide by drowning from an Ohio River ferry-boat.

Achievements

• James Handasyd Perkins was well-known as originator of profound historical investigations, served as the first president of the Cincinnati Historical Society and the first vice-president of the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio. As president of the Cincinnati Relief Union, he was active in prison reform, and was sympathetic with Fourierism. Besies, he was the author of famous work Annals of the West (1846).

Works

More photos

• book

  • Annals Of The West: Embracing A Concise Account Of Principal Events Which Have Occurred In The Western States And Territories

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • The memoir and writings of James Handasyd Perkins

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

Religion

He was, however, unsympathetic with denominational Unitarianism, and in 1848 he took steps to form a liberal church based upon practical Christianity.

Personality

Perkins' features were delicate, with aquiline nose, high forehead, and flowing black hair; he affected carelessness in dress. He had wit and imagination, tinged with recurrent melancholia. His sympathies were warm and he enjoyed to an extraordinary degree the respect of those who were acquainted with his character and qualities.

He became a brilliant extemporaneous speaker.

Connections

He married, December 17, 1834, Sarah H. Elliott, of Guilford, Connecticut.

Father:

Samuel G. Perkins

Mother:

Barbara (Higginson) Perkins

Spouse:

Sarah H. Elliott

Cousin:

William Henry Channing

Son:

Charles Elliott Perkins

teacher:

Timothy Walker

teacher:

George Bancroft

teacher:

Joseph G. Cogswell

Uncle:

Thomas H. Perkins

Uncle:

James Perkins

ancestor:

Edmund Perkins