Thomas Handasyd Perkins collection

Title:

Creator:

Perkins School for the Blind

Date range:

1850-1955 (bulk 1854)

Call number:

AG8

Abstract:

This collection contains clippings and extracts from articles about Thomas Handasyd Perkins, many of which are biographies highlighting information about his career and early life in Boston, Massachusetts. There are also prints and photographs of portraits of T.H. Perkins.

Extent:

2 linear feet, 3 boxes (1 small document box, 1 small flat box, 1 book storage, 2 oversize portraits)

Language:

English

Processed by:

Susanna Coit, 2023

Processing note:

This collection was previously arranged and put in folders. The collection was re-processed, including revision of the arrangement, when the finding aid was created in 2023.

Biographical/Historical note:

Thomas Handasyd Perkins (1764–1854), known as T.H. Perkins, was a Boston Brahmin and a major figure in Boston as both a merchant and philanthropist. T.H. Perkins was born in Boston in 1764, growing up during the American Revolution. As a young man, he used a small bequest from his grandfather (a successful merchant) to build his own trading business with his brother James. Their initial trading in the early 1780s included both enslaved people in Santo Domingo (now Haiti) and goods produced by their labor (cotton, sugar, and rum). In the late 17980s, the brothers began trading ginseng and furs in China. After the Santo Domingo slave revolution of 1791, the Perkins brothers stopped trading in Haiti. They began to bring food into revolutionary France as well as helping to get a 14-year-old George Washington Lafayette safely to the United States.

Around 1815, the Perkins brothers began to trade opium, a common medical ingredient of the time, in China. When the opium trade was banned in 1817 by the Chinese government, Perkins and other merchants smuggled it into the country. This highly lucrative and illegal trade is credited with making Perkins one of the wealthiest men in America at the time.

Well-known in Massachusetts during his lifetime, Perkins served in the Massachusetts Senate and House of Representatives between 1805 and 1817 and was named as Colonel of an honor guard battalion for the governor. He invested widely in regional businesses including the first American commercial railroad, canals, textile mills, and lead and iron mines. After his brother died in 1822, he turned over the trading business to other members of the family and focused on philanthropy including the Boston Athenaeum, Massachusetts General Hospital, McLean Hospital, and the Museum of Fine Arts.

T.H. Perkins supported Dr. John Dix Fisher’s desire to establish a school for the blind in Boston in a number of ways. He was one of the signers of the original charter and an early member of the Board of Trustees. In 1832, Samuel Gridley Howe, the school’s first director, asked if the rapidly growing school could use T.H. Perkins’ mansion on Pearl Street in South Boston. When the school outgrew that space in 1837, Howe asked T.H. Perkins if the school could sell the mansion and use the proceeds to buy a former hotel in South Boston.

T.H. Perkins agreed but required the school to promptly raise $50,000 from the community to demonstrate support for the school. The money was raised within two months, and the school moved to the new site. In 1839, the school took on his name in appreciation for the support Perkins had offered both financially and in the larger community. A choir from the school performed at T.H. Perkins’ widely-attended funeral in 1854 when he died at the age of 89. The school moved to Watertown in 1912.

Today, Perkins School for the Blind acknowledges that our school’s founding financially benefitted from both the slave trade and opium smuggling, and acknowledges the pain caused by this, particularly to those in Black and Chinese communities.

The founding of Perkins highlights complex issues around slavery, race, and profit derived from the exploitation of enslaved and marginalized people. As we look to our future, it is our responsibility to acknowledge our past. Perkins is committed to confronting the truth about the people and history of our institution so as not to perpetuate narratives that obscure or diminish inhumane treatment of anyone or any group of people.

Sources of information:

Arnott, Jennifer. “Thomas Handasyd Perkins.” Perkins Archives Blog. Perkins School for the Blind, Watertown MA. 2022.
Cary, Thomas G. Memoir of Thomas Handasyd Perkins: Containing Extracts From His Diaries and Letters. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1856. Digitized copy available on the Internet Archive.
Chapman, Michael E. “Taking Business to the Tiger’s Gate: Thomas Handasyd Perkins and the Boston-Smyrna-Canton Opium Trade of the Early Republic.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch, vol. 52, 2012, pp. 7–28.
Hunt, Freeman. Lives of American Merchants. New York: Office of Hunt’s Merchant’s Magazine, 1856. Digitized copy available on the Internet Archive. Internet Archive.

Restrictions:

The Perkins Archives reserves the right to deny physical access to materials available in a digital format.

Copyright:

It is the responsibility of the user to obtain permission to publish from the owner of the copyright (the institution, the creator of the record, the author or his/her transferees, heirs, legates, or literary executors). The user agrees to indemnify and hold harmless Perkins School for the Blind, its officers, employees, and agents from and against all claims made by any person asserting that they are an owner of copyright.

Credit line/Citation:

AG8 Thomas Handasyd Perkins collection. Perkins School for the Blind Archives, Watertown, MA.

Scope and contents:

This collection contains clippings and extracts from articles about Thomas Handasyd Perkins (THP). There are also prints and photographs of portraits of THP. Many of the articles are biographies of THP, highlighting information about his career and early life in Boston, Massachusetts. Two of the extracts include THP’s report of a sea serpent sighting in 1817. Also included are reports from local institutions that THP was involved in such as the Massachusetts Historical Society, The Bostonian Society, and the Massachusetts Horticultural Society.

The collection also includes prints of portraits of THP by Gilbert Stuart (circa 1827) and Spiridone Gambardella (undated) and a daguerreotype portrait, circa 1850.

Content warning:

Perkins School for the Blind Archives acknowledges that our historical collections may contain harmful imagery and language. Because harmful content documents attitudes and prejudices of the time in which they were made, we make this content available. It is our intention to mitigate potential harm with content warnings and carefully considered language on content created by the Archives.

This collection contains a writing and language used to describe Asian, African, and Native American people that reflect racist attitudes.

Arrangement:

Abbreviation:

THP = Thomas Handasyd Perkins

The collection is arranged in three series. Each series is arranged chronologically when possible.

Series 1: Clippings
Series 2: Portraits and artwork
Series 3: Books (Placeholders for Box 3 are in Box 1)

Container list:

Box: 1

Series 1: Clippings

B1:F1: Extract from “Second Visit to the United States of North America” by Charles Lyell, 1850
B1:F2: “The Statesman and the Merchant.” Daniel Webster, Dodge’s Literary Museum, 1854
B1:F3: “Benefactors of Education, Literature and Science. Thomas Handasyd Perkins.” American Journal of Education, 1856.
B1:F4: “Art. V.–Wealth and Capitalists of Boston.”, Hunt’s Merchants’ Magazine, 1854
B1:F5: “Art. I.–Mercantile Biography: Thomas Handasyd Perkins.”, Hunt’s Merchants’ Magazine, 1855
B1:F6: “Thomas Handasyd Perkins.” in “Commercial and Industrial Cities of the United States.” unknown author, Hunt’s Merchants’ Magazine, circa 1856
B1:F7: “Recollections of American Society. Part II.” by S.W. Oakes, Scribner’s Monthly, 1881
B1:F8: Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1885
B1:F9: “Daniel Webster and Col. T.H. Perkins: A Summer-Day Outing in 1817.” by John K. Rogers, The New England Magazine, 1886
B1:F10: Proceedings of the Bostonian Society, 1894 (includes address by THP)
B1:F11: “The Gardens and Greenhouses of Col. Thomas Handasyd Perkins in Brookline, Massachusetts.” by George C. Shattuck, M.D., Massachusetts Horticultural Society Year Book, 1955

Series 2: Portraits and artwork

B1:F12: Print of portrait of THP by Spiridone Gambardella with note from nephew (Robert B. Forbes), undated
B1:F13: Print of portrait of THP by Gilbert Stuart (circa 1827), undated
B1:F14: Print of portrait of THP by Spiridone Gambardella, undated
B1:F15: Photographs of THP bust, undated
B1:F16: Correspondence from Georgia S. Chamberlain to Nelson Coon about marble busts, 1957
Oversize: Print of portrait of THP by Gilbert Stuart, circa 1827
Oversize: Print of portrait of THP by Spiridone Gambardella, undated

Box 2:

Daguerreotype portrait of THP, circa 1850

Box 3:

Series 3: Books

Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Volume I, 1836-1837
Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Volume II, 1836-1837

Related collections:

AG53 Perkins Correspondence Collection. Perkins School for the Blind Archives, Watertown, MA.
AG311 Glass plate negatives (unprocessed).

Provenance: