ters. She was a woman of superior ability, energy and perseverance, and reared her family, giving them an education, and her sons such advantages as fitted them for active business lives, which they lived, occupying positions of honor and responsibility with credit to themselves and to her.

She seems to have been a woman of excellent principles, generous, benevolent and charitable, and to have found time and means, aside from the wants and cares of her family, to take an active part with the charitable and benevolent associations of the time.

On her decease, which occurred in 1807, it was voted that the officers of the Boston Female Asylum wear a badge of mourning for the term of seventy-one days, corresponding to the number of years she had lived.

Her descendants are numerous, many of them distinguished for their wealth, intelligence and refinement. Her second son, Thomas Handasyde Perkins, born Dec. 15, 1764, and named for his grandfather Peck, to whom his mother was in part, at least, indebted for her means of rearing her family,—became one of the most eminent, successful and wealthy merchants of Boston.

A memoir of him was published by Thomas G. Cary, Esq., his son-in-law, from which and other sources I have taken the liberty to make a few extracts and draw for such facts in relation to him as it was thought would be of interest to those of my readers who might never see the excellent work of Mr. Cary.

His mother decided to give him a collegiate education; but, when prepared for Cambridge, he was reluctant to enter upon the life of a student, and was placed with the Messrs. Shattuck, then among the most active merchants of Boston, where he remained until twentyone years of age. He then joined his elder brother James in forming a house in St. Domingo. Finding that the climate there did not agree with his health, he returned to Boston, his younger brother, Samuel G., filling his place in the firm.

He soon after turned his attention to trade with China. During the revolution of 1792 in St. Domingo, his brothers returned to Boston. He then formed a co-partnership with his elder brother James, under the firm of J. & T. H. Perkins. This firm continued until the death of the latter, in 1822. Their most important business was the trade of their ships on the northwest coast and with China.