He was born on May 6, 1870 in Milton, Massachussets, United States, the eldest of four sons of Edward Cranch and Jane Sedgwick (Watson) Perkins and a brother of the banker James Handasyd Perkins, 1876-1940. His father was a Boston lawyer, a son of James Handasyd Perkins, 1810-1849, and a younger brother of the railroad executive Charles Elliott Perkins.
Perkins attended Hopkinson's School in Boston and entered Harvard in the class of 1891. In college he demonstrated the all-around ability which marked him in his later life. He was good at his studies, graduating cum laude; his friendships were numerous and varied; his obvious leadership culminated in his captaincy of the crew. He received from Harvard Law School the degree of LL. B. in 1894.
After studies he entered the employ of Ropes, Gray & Loring, the law firm to which, except for an experimental year in a small firm consisting of himself and two contemporaries, he devoted his life. During his career he was counselor to corporations, to individuals, to his college, and to his government. Corporations called him to many parts of the country to handle reorganizations and recapitalizations, and many placed him on their boards of directors. Of these activities perhaps the one in which he took the most satisfaction was his thirteen years of effort as director (1924 - 37), and in particular as chairman of the executive committee (beginning in 1928) and chairman of the board (1930 - 33), of the Boston and Maine Railroad.
From 1905 until his death (with two years out for government service) he served as a member of Harvard's central governing board of seven - the Corporation. There his "courageous wisdom" (in the words of President James B. Conant) was a source of strength to three presidents of Harvard.
In World War I the federal government called him to serve, first as member of the Priorities Commission, next as chief counsel of the War Industries Board, then as assistant director of munitions, then as assistant to the Secretary of War, and finally as American Commissioner to the Interallied War Conference in Paris.
In November 1936 he suffered a coronary thrombosis, from which he only partly recovered. He died at his home in Westwood, Massachussets.
Thomas Nelson Perkins was chairman of the board of the Boston and Maine Railroad, his work changed the public's feeling about the railroad from hostility to friendly respect. He participated in constructing the Dawes Plan and as an individual became the first American to sit with power to vote on the Reparations Commission. Besides, he was chairman of the important Arbitral Tribunal of Interpretation, set up under the Plan at The Hague, he participated in the formulation of the Young Plan and took a leading part in its difficult negotiations.
Perkins had such utter and friendly frankness, such obvious contempt for pose and pretense, that he invariably appealed to the same qualities in those with whom he dealt. Though not a scholar, he nevertheless had a keen intelligence and a deep and instinctive understanding of what motivates people. With an inexhaustible supply of apt, funny, and usually unprintable anecdotes, he would dissipate the tension between bitter antagonists and lead a conference into harmonious deliberation on the merits of the matter at hand; and from then on his forthrightness, courage, and humor rarely failed to bring forth constructive results.
Quotes from others about the person
In 1918 Secretary of War Newton D. Baker said of him: "When I am despondent and in a serious hole, I send for Perkins; he cheers me up and he pulls me out - and the whole Department with me".
In 1900 Perkins married Louisa Catherine Adams, daughter of Charles Francis Adams, 1835-1915, by whom he had three sons, Elliott, James Handasyd, and Thomas Nelson.
