MONROE COUNTY, GA - BIOGRAPHIES   Capt A.L. Perkins

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'MEMOIRS OF GEORGIA", Historical and Biographical Sketches, by S. Emmett Lucas, Jr., PUBLISHED IN 1896.

Typed by Donna Wall

Capt. A.L. PERKINS, planter and capitalist, Bolingbroke,
Monroe County, Georgia, son of Alexander and Selete
(Jernigan) Perkins, was born in Monroe County, January 25,
1827.  The family is of Scotch-Welsh origin, and have been
in the main agriculturists.  Capt. Perkins’ grandfather,
Archibald Perkins, was born in North Carolina, and before he
was of age, went to Virginia, where he lived during the
Revolutionary War, engaged as an overseer.  There he married
a Miss Gibbs, and not long afterward migrated to Georgia and
settled in Greene County, where they raised a large family
of children, and where they died, the grandfather at the age
of ninety-six.  As the children settled in life they
remained mostly in Georgia.  Alexander Perkins, the
captain’s father, was born in Greene County, February 8,
1795.  During the War of 1812-1814 he was in the army on the
Indian frontier.  He met and married his wife, Miss
Jernigan, in Hancock County, Georgia (where she was born and
reared), December 26, 1816.  A brother of hers, Seaborn
Jernigan, is now living at White Pains, Georgia.  Mr.
Perkins lived in Greene County five years, then in Jasper
two years, and thence in 1823 removed to Monroe County and
settled about eight miles southeast of Forsyth on the road
to Dame’s Ferry.  Here they raised a family of eight
children:  Adeline, who married A.D. Steele, both deceased;
Archibald, deceased at twenty-one; Elizabeth, wife of Henry
Sharpe, Atlanta; A.L., subject of this sketch; W.H.,
deceased; Frances, wife of W.C. King of Monroe County; John,
enlisted in the Fourteenth Georgia regiment, after serving
in several campaigns, died of measles at Alum Springs,
Virginia, and Albert C., Monroe County.  Mr. Perkins was a
systematic, painstaking and hard-working man, and
accumulated considerable property, including land and
slaves.  He was also abstemious in his habits; chewed a
little tobacco, but never smoked.  He was a Whig in
politics, and a Methodist in religion.  His wife died May
17, 1875, aged seventy-five years, and he died March 26,
1892, aged ninety-seven years.  The family is remarkable for
longevity, reaching years from eighty to ninety-seven.
Capt. Perkins was married in Monroe County Dec. 20, 1849, to
Miss Mary Jane, daughter of Amos and Nancy M. (Head) Ponder.
She was born and raised in the county, her father having
come to Monroe in 1824, and settled five miles north of
Forsyth.  To this happily-mated couple only two children
have been born:  Josephine Lee, at home, and Mary Lee, wife
of S.B. Price, ex-mayor and present postmaster, Macon,
Georgia.  He is one of the most popular and influential -
indeed one of the foremost men in Georgia’s “central city.” 
At his large plantation of 3,300 acres at Bolingbroke,
managed and cultivated under progressive, up-to-date ideas,
his beautiful, modernly arranged home and elaborately laid-
off and beautifully adorned grounds, Capt. Perkins is
enjoying his well-earned wealth and dispersing that lavish
hospitality so characteristic of the “old-time” southern
planter. Capt. Perkins is as public-spirited as he is
wealthy, takes great interest in everything calculated to
advance the community, and in political matters – local and
Federal.  In addition to his extensive farming interests,
Capt. Perkins owns stock in the oil mills in Forsyth, in
which he is the largest stockholder.  He is a Democrat and a
Mason of forty years’ standing.