Remarks made by Hon. T. H. Perkins at the laying of the corner stone of the Boston exchange, August 2, 1841
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Thomas Handasyd Perkins was an American merchant and philanthropist.
Background
He was born on December 15, 1764 in Boston, Massachussets, United States, the second son and one of eight children of James and Elizabeth (Peck) Perkins, and a descendant of Edmund Perkins who emigrated to New England in 1650.
His father was a vintner, licensed August 13, 1767, to sell wine at his house on King Street, which was near the scene of the Boston Massacre. His father died in 1773, but his mother took charge of her husband's affairs and until her death in 1807, conducted them so well that she became prominent in business and philanthropy.
Education
Before his father's death, Thomas was sent to a clergyman in Middleboro for instruction, after which he attended school in Boston. Later he was sent to Hingham to prepare for Harvard, but he decided on a commercial career.
Career
He entered the counting house of the Shattucks, Boston merchants, remaining till 1785. He then visited his elder brother in Santo Domingo and joined him in business there after a sojourn in South Carolina. Finding the climate detrimental to his health, he returned to Boston by 1788 to manage the firm's affairs there. His place in Santo Domingo was taken by a younger brother.
A relative of his wife was captain of a ship in the China trade, and this connection led Perkins to make a voyage of investigation to Batavia and Canton as a supercargo of a ship owned by Elias Hasket Derby, of Salem, after which he embarked in the Oriental trade.
In 1792 the insurrection in Santo Domingo ruined the business there. Perkins' brothers returned to Boston and with the elder he formed a partnership as J. & T. H. Perkins, the name under which the business was conducted till James Perkins' death in 1822, when it was reorganized, but T. H. Perkins remained the principal partner till 1838. Its trade was chiefly with China, but speculative ventures were undertaken wherever they seemed likely to be profitable, and the business he controlled so long made many handsome fortunes besides his own.
He spent about eight months in Europe, for the most part in France. While he was there, James Monroe, then United States minister to France, asked him to request permission for George Washington Lafayette to go to America. Securing this privilege from the Committee of Safety, he shared with Joseph Russell, a Boston merchant, the expense of the journey, and had the youth entertained at his Boston home on his way to the Washington household. When Perkins visited the projected capital of the United States in 1796, he was presented to Washington and afterward paid a two-day visit to "Mount Vernon, " counting it one of the greatest experiences of his life.
Perkins was eight times elected to the Senate and three times to the lower house of the Massachusetts legislature between 1805 and 1824, besides being a presidential elector in 1816 and 1832.
He was in Europe for a year in 1811-12, and once he acted as bearer of dispatches to France for the United States ministry in London, running considerable risk through being given a loose document openly addressed to the Minister of Russia, with which country Napoleon was on the verge of war. Notwithstanding his detention, on entering France, as a person suspected of hostility to the country, he managed to prevent the discovery of the document and afterward delivered it.
He returned to the United States after the outbreak of the War of 1812 and he was active in opposition to the Madison administration. He was one of the three Massachusetts delegates appointed to go to Washington to present the plea of the Hartford Convention that Massachusetts, alone or in association with its neighbors, be allowed to defend its own territories, and to apply for that purpose Federal taxes collected within its borders. Peace came before this resolution was presented.
Perkins was for a long time an officer of the Massachusetts militia and was generally known as colonel. For a time he was president of the Boston branch of the United States Bank, and he had one of the first railways in the United States constructed in 1827 to transport the product of a granite quarry at Quincy, Massachussets, of which he was president, two miles to the seaboard.
In 1833 he deeded his residence to the New England Asylum for the Blind for the period it should occupy it, but in 1839 he made the gift unconditional, and since then the institution has borne his name. He was himself blind for a time in his last years, but an operation restored the sight of one eye a few months before his death.