Page:Sketches of representative women of New England.djvu/209

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
154
REPRESENTATIVE WOMEN OF NEW ENGLAND

Mrs. Pickett is a member of the Finance Committee of the First Baptist Church in Beverly, and has been an active member of the church for several years. She is interested in the home and foreign mission work, is treasurer of the "Ina.smuch" circle of King's Daughters and a teacher in the Chinese department of the Bible school. She is also chairman of the Executive Committee of the Woman's Federation of the First Baptist Church. She is a member of the Lothrop Club and of the Supply Committee of the Old Ladies' Home Society of Beverly. In 1898 and 1899 she was secretary of the Beverly Volunteer Aid Association, which conducted special work for the soldiers of the Spanish-American War.


JULIA MARIA BAKER, wife of William James Baker, of Worcester, was born in that city, October 13, 1830, daughter of Sanuiel and Mary (Harrington) Perry.

In a published article by Professor Arthur L. Perry, LL.D., entitled "An Ancestral Research," whence has been derived some of the early history and genealogy that follows, the Perry lineage is traced back to the Rev. John Perry, of Farnborough (now Fareham, Hampshire), England, who died in 1621. The clergyman's son John, shortly after his father's death, was apprenticed to learn the cloth-workers' trade. He married Johanna, daughter of Joseph Holland, a cloth-worker and citizen of London. Her father's will, dated 1659, printed in Waters's "Genealogical Gleanings," makes bequests to his "son-in-law, John Perry, and Johanna, his wife, my daughter," and their three children. It was this John1 Perry who, accompanied by his son John,2 came to New England and settled in Watertown, near Boston, near the close of the year 1666 or early in 1667.

John2 Perry married in Watertown in December, 1667, Sarah Clary. They had nine children, Josiah,2 born in 1684, being the seventh. Josiah3 Perry married Bethiah Cutter, daughter of Ephraim and Bethiah (Wood) Cutter and grand-daughter of Richard1 Cutter. Nathan4 Perry, born in 1718, was one of their ten children. He married at Watertown in 1746 Hannah Fiske. The Perrys of Watertown in colonial times were engaged in some form of cloth-working, being mostly weavers and tailors. Bethiah, first wife of Josiah Perry and mother of his children, died in 1735, and his second wife, Elizabeth, died in 1748. In 1751 Josiah and his son Nathan settled on a farm of eighty acres on the north-western slope of Sagatabscot Hill (now Union Hill), Worcester, Mass. Of this property they were joint owners. Much of the land remains in the hands of the family at this day.

Nathan* Perry, by occupation a farmer and weaver, was Treasurer of Worcester County fifteen years, also Town Treasurer most of the time, and for many years Notary Public. He was for twenty-three years deacon in the old South Church. A stanch patriot in trying times, he stood high in the confidence of his fellow-citizens. He died in February, 1806. Moses Perry, son of Nathan and one of a family of eight children, was born in 1762, and lived to be eighty years old. He succeeded to the ownership of the home farm, was industrious, frugal, and thrifty, and although his schooling, it is said, had been limited to six weeks, he was much respected as a man of intelligence and influence, a slow speaker, but one whose words carried weight. With a placid temper he combined great force of character. It is related of him that at a church meeting where the members were becoming excited he arose and said: " Brethren, we are getting pretty warm. I think we had better go home, and I shall set the example." He then took his hat and started. He was a deacon in the South Church thirty-five years and in the Union Church six years. His wife, Hannah Hall, whom he married in 1791, died in November, 1861, at ninety-three years of age. She is spoken of as having been somewhat eccentric and "perhaps lacking balance of mind," but of a "kindly, social nature, very fond of her church, and with a wonderful memory for the sermon." They had eight children, five sons and three daughters. Three of the sons were ministers of the gospel, and two were farmers, one settling in Central New York, and the other, Samuel, in Worcester. Two of the daughters married farmers. One was the