A few weeks after I first started on my genealogical journey I discovered a document that made me both sad and, I’m sorry to say, happy at the same time. It was the death record for my great-grandfather Lee’s oldest sister, Ida Mae. She was a 20-year-old schoolteacher in the village of Stockbridge, Vermont when she succumbed to typhoid fever. Truly tragic, and the kind of thing that happened far too often in those days.
So of course I was sad about her death. But I couldn’t do anything to bring her back or to let her fulfill all the promise that she had. What I could do, thanks to this document, was keep researching: the document was the first I’d seen that gave a birth name for Lee’s (and Ida’s) mother, Agnes Ida. Her last name had been Perkins. Aided by that discovery, I soon was able to discover that Agnes Ida’s father was Lyman Perkins, born in Barnard, Vermont, all the way back in 1803. Lyman’s father, in turn was Gaius Perkins, who would be my 4x-great-grandfather.
When doing research I tend to look at any source I can get my hands on. I went through everything I found via ancestry.com, including running searches for Gaius with about 12 different sets of search parameters, as well as several Google and newspapers.com searches. I found quite a bit about Gaius Perkins, as you shall see.
I was thrilled to learn, thanks to a Google search, that Gaius Perkins's very house, built in 1831, still stands today in South Woodstock, a village in the town of Woodstock reached by taking Route 106 about four miles south from the huge Woodstock Inn on the green in Woodstock village. Woodstock is the “shire town” of Windsor County, just a few miles from Barnard, Stockbridge, Bridgewater, and Hartland, four towns where I knew my Perkins ancestors to have lived. It made sense, I thought, that he would have lived there. The house is safely ensconced in the protected South Woodstock Historic District, which is on the National Register of Historic Places.
My immediate thought: “Time for a trip to South Woodstock!” It’s a tiny village but pretty enough to be worth the visit. The Perkins (Bennett) House is there just across from the sprawling Kedron Valley Inn, as gorgeous as promised on NRHP description.
A side view of the home Gaius Perkins built in 1831 in South Woodstock, Vermont
The 1818 Kedron Valley Inn sits just across the road, where Route 106 bends sharply south
Just next door stands another institution intimately connected with Gaius Perkins: the
Green Mountain Perkins Academy. This school was established as the Green Mountain Central Institute in 1848, when Gaius was about 70. Students, numbering as many as 200, came from far and wide and boarded with local families, including the family of Gaius Perkins. Nine of the first fifteen students to enter Tufts University (then Tufts College) in Medford, Massachusetts, when it opened in 1855 had attended the Green Mountain Central Institute.
Although Gaius Perkins was the largest donor at the time the school was established, it wasn’t named for him until 1870, after his death. It remained open until 1898, when growing support for public education in Vermont rendered it unnecessary. The schoolhouse is still there as a museum and an invaluable archive of local history in South Woodstock. The people associated with the GMPA are active in documenting South Woodstock's past (they've put together some books) and restoration (a recent project was reconstructing a 19th-century loom).
Gaius Perkins was president of the Academy's Board of Trustees in 1869, the year before his death. I wonder if anyone ever was confused with Gaius Perkins as president and Galen Persons as vice-president. Rev. William R. Shipman of "College Hill, Mass." was a native Vermonter with a professorship at Tufts, a school closely connected to GMPA in its early days.
The building, which resembles a classic white New England church, sits slightly uphill from the Kedron Brook. I was very happy to walk right up to it and check it out, even though it wasn’t open the day I visited (the building is open to visitors only a few weekends a year; here are some
photos from someone who was able to go inside). My family is full of teachers. What a great thing to have an ancestor who so valued education that he co-founded such a wonderful school in his small, rural community and left the bulk of his estate to it.
The Green Mountain Perkins Academy
Naturally I wanted to learn more about this Gaius Perkins. The next find came courtesy of Google Books, which made available the
History of Woodstock, Vermont written by Henry Swan Dana in 1889. Gaius Perkins appears multiple times in Dana’s town history, and in some pretty interesting capacities. Apparently he was a prominent community member, serving as a Justice of the Peace in Woodstock for decades.
In the first mention in Dana's book, in Chapter 8, Gaius Perkins is identified as “carrying on the tanning, currying, boot and shoe making business, on a large scale” when he was in his twenties. Dana continues: "He took the tanning business and the shoemaker's trade from his father, Captain William Perkins, who moved from Hartland to South Woodstock in 1801." Now I can go back yet another generation and start following this line back.
Gaius next turns up in Chapter 15 (Military Companies):
FOURTH COMPANY OF INFANTRY.
Besides the company of infantry in the North Parish in Woodstock, there was another in the South Parish, entitled the Fourth Company of Infantry, organized at a very early day…Ebed M. Burk was captain in 1800. At the same time Nathaniel Randall was lieutenant, and Gaius Perkins a corporal. When Burk resigned, Perkins was promoted captain over Randall. This created much feeling at the time among some, and Perkins’s further advancement in the military line was sharply contested for years. Behind him were Bennett Palmer, lieutenant, and Walter Palmer, ensign, waiting for him to get ahead.
When the Legislature met in Woodstock, 1807, the South Company of militia was called upon to serve as Governor's escort on election day, together with the Hartland Artillery, under Captain Campbell. The company was then under the command of Captain Perkins, and was in such fine discipline that the post of honor on the right was assigned it, and the governor remarked that it was the finest company in the State.
At length, during the War of 1812, companies of minute men were organized, subject to be called out at a moment’s warning. One such company was organized in this town, and the governor appointed Captain Perkins to act as major for the same, should it be called into service. It never was, but, from this appointment, Perkins received his title of major.
Abraham P. Mather was corporal in the company at the same time with Perkins. He was brother to Frederick Mather, and the two, being gay and spirited youths, were reckoned not much behind any of the young men in the south part at that time. But when Perkins was advanced Mather still remained corporal. This he regarded as a slight, and, being indignant at the same, used language that the company did not forget. Mather remained corporal for several years, but at length his promotion began.
(emphasis added)
The War of 1812! Wow.
Some Vermont militia uniforms during the War of 1812. The uniform on the right is from Barnard, where my ancestors were early settlers.
Dana continues:
The following incident in the history of this company is taken from the "Vermont Republican" for January 30, 1809:—
“Saturday, the 21st of January, 1809, the militia company under the command of Captain G. Perkins, in the South Parish in Woodstock, were called together for the purpose of drafting their quota of the one hundred thousand ordered by Congress, who almost unanimously volunteered. We also learn that a considerable number of the old veterans of the Revolution, from forty to seventy years of age, volunteered their services, in order once more, if necessary, to avenge the wrongs of an injured country.”
When Gaius Perkins was elected captain he made a change in some expressions used on the parade-ground. Before his time captains used to say, “Shoulder hoo.” Perkins changed this to “Shoulder firelock,” which remained the form of this order till 1812, when it was changed to “Shoulder arms.”
When Perkins resigned, Bennett Palmer was elected captain; but before he had occasion to parade the company he moved down to the Green to live, and Daniel Ransom was elected captain in his place. But Palmer desired the privilege of acting as captain one day, and, as he had served long in the company, by general consent the favor was granted, and upon the next annual June training he took command, Ransom giving way to him for the occasion…These events took place in 1812.
(emphasis added)
Gaius resurfaces in Dana’s Chapter 27 (Bridges Over the Quechee), one of about ten men named in March 1811 to a committee to oversee design and construction of a new covered bridge at Woodstock Village, the prior bridge having been washed away in storms the previous fall. Today’s bridge on the site dates from 1877 and is about the tenth bridge the town built there. In the early days they were poorly made and didn’t last long.
One might imagine that joining the Freemasons would have tremendous appeal for a prominent young fellow like Gaius Perkins, a Protestant of colonial-era stock in early nineteenth-century Vermont. One would be correct. As Dana recounts in Chapter 30:
Washington Mark Master's Lodge, No. 8, was founded August 28, 1813, agreeably to a dispensation from Charles K. Williams, Grand High Priest, to Gaius Perkins and others. The lodge was installed in due form September 12, 1814, and public exercises were held at the Congregational Church. Washington Mark Lodge continued to flourish till the year 1829, when for some cause it appears to have been given up.
(emphasis added)
I thought I knew the cause. Motivated by the mysterious 1826 disappearance (and many believed murder) of William Morgan of Batavia, New York, a Mason planning to publish a tell-all exposé, anti-Masonic sentiment was at fever pitch in the late 1820s. This was a time when populist “Jacksonian democratic” feeling rendered all élite and secret societies suspect, none more so than the Masons.
My hunch was right. Neither South Woodstock, Vermont, nor Gaius Perkins were spared involvement in the controversy. As Dana reports:
[T]he anti-Masonic movement..., beginning in the region of Batavia, soon spread with great violence throughout the Northern States of this Union. It was not long in reaching Vermont; it penetrated every village and hamlet within its borders, and the heat and excitement over the matter rose high in Woodstock, mingling in business affairs, coloring all the relations of life, and affecting every question of a public character.
According to Chauncey Richardson, the beginning of anti-Masonry in this town as a social and political movement may be stated as follows: It is granted that there were seceding Masons in various parts of the State. Among the number was Elder E. B. Rollins, who had been a Royal Arch Mason. He started a paper in Randolph called "The Vermont Luminary," in which he gave a history of Masonry in its various degrees, as he had passed through them. Charles Mackenzie, likewise a seceder, invited this Elder Rollins to come to South Woodstock and preach in the old meeting-house. The Elder accepted and held forth in the church.
People had gathered in great numbers to hear him, expecting an exposé of Masonry, but the preacher gave first a good Sunday discourse, and then closed that part of his work. Next he entered upon the subject which was occupying the minds of his hearers, and made some disclosures and statements concerning Masonry. When he was through, Gaius Perkins, an Arch-Mason who was present, rose and said the remarks of the speaker were not true. Elder Rollins replied, "If you, sir, are an Arch-Mason, you know what I have said is true."
(emphasis added)
That must have been a tense moment.
In the late 1820s and early 1830s anti-Masonic feeling ran strong in the northern United States
In New York State, an Anti-Masonic party did very well in elections during this period, attracting a young William Seward. The anti-Masons became something of a political force in Woodstock also. In the early 1830s there was a pitched battle of five years' length between anti-Masons (most of whom were Masons who'd resigned) and the local establishment for political control of Woodstock. As Dana related it, the "animosities engendered by this strife reached every family; they penetrated even the sanctuary, and were attended with an exhibition of personalities and recriminations such as the lover of sobriety and good order in society may hope never to see repeated."
Ultimately, following the lead of Washington County (Montpelier area), Windsor County's Masons met at the Woodstock courthouse on September 30, 1834, and voluntarily dissolved their Masonic institution "for the sake of restoring public tranquility." During this entire controversy Gaius, who apparently had been ahead of the game in disbanding his local Masonic chapter in South Woodstock five years before the rest of the county's Masons followed suit, was prospering in his tanning business and erecting his beautiful new house. It doesn't seem that the controversy hurt him in any major way.
I wanted to learn more about Gaius's ancestors, and soon I came across this entry in The Family of John Perkins of Ipswich, Massachusetts, published in Salem by Dr. George Augustus Perkins in 1884:
339 Gaius (Wm., Abraham, Abraham, Isaac, John, John) was born in Lyme, Conn., Sept. 9, 1778. He removed to Hartland, Vt., and afterwards to South Woodstock, Vt., in 1801. There he married Eunice Field, June 26, 1804. She was born Feb. 12, 1785, and died June 25, 1858. He carried on an extensive business of tanning and shoemaking in South Woodstock for many years, and died there March 3, 1870.
He was an ardent supporter of institutions of learning, and contributed largely towards the establishment and support of an academy in South Woodstock. We quote the following in relation to him from Prof. W. R. Shipman.
"Major Gaius Perkins died in South Woodstock, March 3, 1870, aged ninety-one years and six months. His long life was not more remarkable for the number of its days than for the wonderful preservation, to its very close, of the faculties and spirit of youth. He was not, indeed, exempt from the weariness of age, but not one of his senses was materially impaired; his judgment remained adequate to the transaction of business, while his heart was as young as ever ; and his interest in passing events, whether of the neighborhood or the nation, was undiminished.
Naturally social, he was to the last a genial companion for all, and his beautiful old age was a perpetual joy to the home in which children's children rose up to call him blessed. His favor was extended to all good enterprises, and he always heeded the injunction to 'follow after the things that make for peace.'
A life-long and active Universalist, his venerable form was, until very recently, familiar in the gatherings of the denomination far and near. He made the first and largest subscription in Vermont, for the Green Mountain Central Institute,* and gave more than any others to sustain our school at South Woodstock. It was hardly too much to say that, as his last days were his best, so like the evening twilight were his lingering years. Honored and loved by a multitude of friends, his memory will long be cherished in their hearts, while he, departing from the earth at peace with man and God, and now, united with the great company of the redeemed, shall dwell forever in the mansions of the blest."
* Now, the "Green Mountain Perkins Academy."
Children of Gaius and Eunice (Field) Perkins were:
510 Samuel Field, b. May 12, 1805; d. Feb. 14, 1866.
511 Adeline, b. Aug. 18, 1807; unm'd; d. Feb. 19, 1830.
512 Marcia, b. March 1, 1809.
513 Frederick, b. Oct. 13, 1810; d. March 23, 1863.
514 Charles Dunham, b. March 23, 1813.
515 Edward, b. April 9, 1815; unm'd ; d. in 1882.
A nice write-up, but wait a minute – no Lyman? I’m supposed to be descended from this guy through his son Lyman. And what’s all this about being born in Lyme, Connecticut? Lyman, in the 1880 census, said his father was born in Massachusetts, not Connecticut.
Lyman Perkins, in the 1880 U.S. Census, reported that his father was born in Massachusetts, not Connecticut
Well, it wouldn’t be the first time errors of that sort turned up in 1880 census forms or genealogy books compiled in the same era. But Lyman’s birth and death records make clear his mother’s name was Melison (or something along those lines). Who is this Eunice Field? Second wife, or…
…or I’m completely wrong that I’m descended from the Gaius Perkins who defended the Masons and built the beautiful brick house that still stands and founded that school.
Back to the research. 1860 census. Here’s Gaius of South Woodstock, quite prosperous with his $5,000 farm. He’s living with his equally prosperous son Charles, a son who does appear on the list given by George A. Perkins’s genealogy book.
Connecticut-born Gaius Perkins, living in South Woodstock with his son Charles D. Perkins in the 1860 U.S. Census.
Gaius Perkins cannot have been a common name. Is it possible there was another Gaius Perkins, about the same age, in the same area? There was:
Here's another Gaius Perkins in Barnard, Vermont, in 1860
The handwriting’s hard to make out, but I compared the “G” in “Gaius” with the “G” in “Gardner” two lines above and they match well enough. As you can see, this Gaius Perkins lived in Barnard, the exact town in which my Lyman Perkins was born and lived his first 50 years. And this Gaius was, in fact, born in Massachusetts, as Lyman said his father was. He's 83, the South Woodstock Gaius is listed as 81. Unfortunately, in his final years this Barnard Gaius Perkins was a “pauper” living in the poor house.
To be honest, this was in keeping with what I would have expected given what I knew of my Vermont family. I had been having difficulty reconciling the relative affluence of South Woodstock’s Gaius and the financial struggles of my great-grandfather’s parents not long after his death. Admirable as his support for the school was, did he really leave his estate to the academy while his children and grandchildren suffered? Was there some kind of dramatic falling out that provoked this move? Learning that he wasn’t my ancestor actually absolved me of having to wonder about his character and how my branch fit into the family picture. I was free to admire the guy for what he’d done.
But you want to be sure. So I kept digging, and found all sorts of references to Gaius Perkins in the records in Barnard, not Woodstock. I learned that my Gaius Perkins was born in Middleborough, Massachusetts, on January 24, 1777, and that his father, John, participated in the Siege of Boston and in several other capacities during the American Revolution. John Perkins traced his ancestry back to Abraham Perkins, who’d settled in Hampton (now New Hampshire, then Massachusetts) in 1640.
Gaius Perkins in Barnard in the 1830 Census...
...and Gaius Perkins in South Woodstock in the 1830 Census.
My Gaius and his family moved north to Woodstock (ironically) in 1787 before settling in Barnard. The Barnard Gaius – my ancestor – married Melison Curtis (a story for another time) in Barnard on September 6, 1798. They had six sons and a daughter right there in town. She died there in 1850 and he lived the rest of his life in Barnard, dying there at the age of 89 in 1866. My Gaius was a poor farmer his whole life, but despite the Horatio Alger myths, so were most people in Vermont and America in his day. There’s no shame in it.
The funny thing is we did have Perkins relatives in Woodstock. On this IRS document from 1865 Elisha P. of Bridgewater and Orson of Woodstock, marked with the green arrows, are nephews of my Gaius. Orson you might recall from my recent diary on musicians in the family. We're not related (at least not closely at all) to the South Woodstock Gaius, marked with a red arrow, and he's the one who was assessed a penalty for nonpayment of taxes.
The South Woodstock Gaius was born in Lyme, Connecticut on September 9, 1778, the son of Captain William Perkins, who also served in the Revolution. Their line traced back not to Abraham, but to John Perkins of Ipswich, Massachusetts (remember the genealogy book I found him in?). Most New England Perkins families descended either from John Perkins of Ipswich, of from either Abraham or Isaac of Hampton. The descendants of John Perkins of Ipswich, generally speaking, have been the wealthiest and most prominent of the Perkinses in New England.
The South Woodstock Gaius was 14 when his family moved from the Connecticut coast to the town of Hartland, Vermont (just east of Woodstock) in 1793. They settled in South Woodstock in 1801. He married Eunice Field and had entirely different children who have nothing to do with my family tree at all. That Gaius died in 1870.
I’m not trying to rationalize my mistake, but the similarity in the lifespan of the two Gaiuses (Gaii?) is striking: 1777-1866 and 1778-1870. The name Gaius is of Latin (and probably Etruscan) origin, and was in fact the (unused) first name for many a Roman emperor, including Julius Caesar, Caesar Augustus, and Caligula. It came into use in New England in the 1770s, and I find it curious that people who fought to cast off a king and create a republic would gave to their sons a name associated with men who destroyed a republic to create an empire. But in those heady days the historical example of the Roman republic was a source of fascination for American patriots, and all things Roman had their appeal.
A word to new genealogy researchers: Look at each new piece of information with a critical eye. You should always try to back your conclusions up with solid documentary evidence as much as possible, but understand when you start out that you will, almost certainly, make mistakes. There will be many small inconsistencies in old records (e.g. a person who’s 42 in the 1900 census and listed as 55 instead of 52 ten years later), but if the contradictions just become too great for it to make any sense, there’s probably a reason.
The Gaius Perkins saga taught me a lesson about doing this kind of work. My teacher wasn't the man who founded the pretty school, but the true ancestor who shared his name. I’m a pretty good researcher – tenacious, good eye for detail, all that stuff. I’ve had a number of hunches and virtually all of them have been proven right by some document at some point. But I still spent the better part of three weeks chasing the wrong Gaius Perkins. By the time I figured it out I had to erase a family tree stretching from Imposter Gaius, as I now call him, back to 16th century-England. I replaced it with an equally fascinating family tree stretching back just as far, with some really interesting characters. And this one has the added benefit of being mine for real. I couldn't change my Gaius's poverty any more than I could change Ida Mae's untimely death, but I'm gratified that at least I know more of what happened than I did before.