Norfolk City Virginia USGenWeb Archives Biographies.....Perry, Joseph William 1845 - 1913 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/va/vafiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Joy Fisher http://www.rootsweb.com/~archreg/vols/00001.html#0000031 February 25, 2008, 9:58 pm Author: Leonard Wilson (1916) JOSEPH WILLIAM PERRY JOSEPH WILLIAM PERRY, for many years one of the most prominent and progressive citizens of Norfolk, Virginia, was born in Bertie County, North Carolina, on March 3, 1845. The maiden name of his mother was Elizabeth Sessoms. She was a great-niece several times removed of Colonel Benjamin Wynns, who was famous as a soldier in the War of 1776-82. Mr. Perry's father was Joseph J. Perry, a successful planter, who was valued for his personality wherever he was known. The family of Mr. Perry is of Scotch-Irish descent, and the name appears among those of the early Virginia colonists. It is frequently found in Hening's Virginia Statutes; and a History of Virginia tells of the coming of the Perrys to the colony in 1620. From Virginia various Perrys emigrated to the more Southern States. One of the earlier members of the Perry family was Sir Micajah Perry, a noted merchant who served as alderman of the city of London in the latter part of the seventeenth century, and later became Lord Mayor of London during the reign of William and Mary. Sir Micajah Perry was for years the most conspicuous English merchant supplying the Virginia and North Carolina colonists and planters with goods of various kinds in exchange for tobacco and other products. He was banker and commission merchant for these people, and was often made the executor of those leaving large estates. The new settlers had unbounded confidence in his ability and honesty of character and he was frequently sent from England as the duly commissioned agent of the crown to advise and negotiate with them. Among the largest contributors to the original endowment of William and Mary College in Virginia were Micajah Perry, Thomas Lane, and Richard Perry. There are many distinguished names in the records of this family. William Hayner Perry, born in Greenville, South Carolina, 1837, was a lawyer, soldier in the Confederate Army, member of the State Convention of South Carolina in 1865-6; solicitor of the Eighth District, 1868-72; member of the State Senate from Greenville County, 1880-84; and member of Congress in the Forty-fifth and Fiftieth sessions as a Democrat. Benjamin Frank Perry, born 1805 in Pendleton District, South Carolina, was a lawyer and author; State Senator in 1835; Governor after the war; elected United States Senator in 1870, but not allowed to take his seat; in 1872, elected to United States House of Representatives, but refused his seat; author of Reminiscences of Public Men. Madison S. Perry was Governor of Florida in 1857-64. Matthew Galbraith Perry, born in New Jersey, 1794, of a northern division of the family, and commodore in the United States Navy, distinguished himself highly as an officer in numerous important naval conflicts. Everyone, finally, is familiar with the name of Oliver Hazard Perry, the brother of the last-mentioned naval officer, and the hero who captured the entire English squadron in the great battle of Lake Erie. Joseph William Perry's early boyhood was spent with his parents on their plantation. He inherited much of the energy, business tact and skill, Scotch-Irish courage and frankness, great benevolence and nobility of heart that so strongly characterized his great-grandfather and his early ancestors who first landed on American soil. He was a student at the Academy, a school of high rank in Harrellsville, Hertford County, North Carolina, until 1863. Then, at the age of eighteen, he entered the Confederate Army as a private in Captain Langley Tayloe's Company. This company was camped at Bethlehem, Hertford County, and later moved to Camp Gatling, near Murfreesboro. While at the latter camp, the 68th North Carolina Regiment was organized, with James W. Hinton of Pasquotank as colonel, Edward C. Yellowly of Pitt County, lieutenant-colonel and the subject of our sketch, sergeant. Mr. Perry served as sergeant in the 68th Regiment until February, 1864, when he was ordered by Colonel Hinton to report to Colonel James M. Wynn as adjutant of Wynn's Battalion of Cavalry with the rank of lieutenant. He then did service in the Army of Northern Virginia until the close of the war. He was a true and gallant soldier, in spite of his extreme youth. "No better or braver officer was in our army than Adjutant J. W. Perry," says Clark's "Regimental History of the North Carolina troops in the Confederate Army," Vol. IV, page 368. After the conclusion of hostilities between the States, Mr. Perry returned to his father's plantation, where he remained until, the war clouds partially passing, the doors of schools again opened to Southern men. In 1867, having acquired sufficient funds by personal effort, he entered Eastman College at Ponghkeepsie, in New York State. Mr. Perry was president of the Lee Association, a society formed by Southern students, and vice-president of his graduating class. He graduated with distinction, returned to North Carolina and settled in Winton. In 1870, to fill a vacancy, he was appointed clerk of the Superior Court of Hertford County, North Carolina, by the judge of that district. Here he absorbed the legal technique that was to be of great value to him in the wider part he was subsequently to play in the world of business and finance. On January 2, 1872, Mr. Perry resigned the above position and engaged in the mercantile and lumber business, mastering the details, as he did of everything he undertook, in a manner that years afterwards caused his judgment and opinion in these great branches of industry to be highly valued. On April 17, 1872, at Barfields, Hertford County, North Carolina, Mr. Perry married Miss Mary Harrell Jernigan, daughter of Lemuel Roberts Jernigan, and his wife, Mary Jernigan, nee Harrell. Of this union three children were born, Lemuel Jernigan, who died at the age of seven, and two daughters, Maude Stafford (now Mrs. Gilbert Hinton), and Mary Lemuel, who, with their mother, survive. In 1877 he removed to Norfolk, Virginia. There he formed a copartnership with Colonel William D. McGlaughan in the cotton commission business, under the firm name of McGlaughan & Perry. After his first partner's death, Mr. Perry formed the firm of Perry & Jernigan, the junior member of which was his brother-in-law, Thomas K. Jernigan, who afterward occupied an important post in the diplomatic service of the United States, serving in Japan under the first Cleveland administration and in China under the second. Subsequently he incorporated his large and growing business under the title of J. W. Perry Company and, despite the tax on his time incident to the supervision of one of the most widely known cotton houses in the South, Mr. Perry directed his attention to other enterprises with great success. From 1880 to 1913 he was prominently identified with the Citizens' Bank of Norfolk of which for nearly twenty years, until the time of his death, he was its first vice-president. It was he who was most instrumental in the erection of the stately home of that bank on Main Street, the pioneer among Norfolk's handsome modern buildings. He also erected the Norfolk Board of Trade Building, and was a leader in sundry other large undertakings for the development of his adopted city. Mr. Perry had the most intense love for the South, and the strongest belief in the future of that part of it which formed the home of his later life. His daring creative and financial genius was devoted to the upbuilding of Norfolk. He was never too busy to aid the material and civic development of the city and section and in greater degree than is given to most men he lived to see the results of his efforts. Norfolk to him was typical of the South and he sought to bear a part in the work there which, duplicated by like spirits in other sections, would bring the whole war stricken South into its full inheritance. Among his interests having to do with such development may be mentioned the American Suburban Corporation, the Norfolk Warehouse Corporation, Definite Contract Building and Loan Association, and the Willoughby Beach Company. He and W. W. Chamberlaine were pioneers in the electric light and power company at Norfolk, their plant and franchise having formed the basis of Norfolk's present electric system. Mr. Perry was president of the Atlantic Hotel Corporation; and, besides his official connection with the Citizens' Bank, he was a director in the Marine Bank, and in many other large commercial enterprises. He was interested in Portsmouth office buildings and other properties and furthered the development of Portsmouth as well as of Norfolk. A life long Democrat, he never sought political preferment, but his party always found him ready and willing with brain and hand, and quick to respond where the need was greatest, especially in the sinister crisis of the nineties when misrule threatened his native State. Never ostentatious in his public and private benefactions, he, nevertheless, bestowed both in a way that gave many a young man his start and helped those of mature years in the day of adversity. Mr. Perry's early life in the country imbued him with the greatest love for everything pertaining to it. He took the keenest pleasure in the crops and blooded stock raised on his beautiful estate of Rayners, on the Chowan River, a model farm, ideally situated, which he visited frequently and personally supervised. An extensive reader, possessing a most unusual and remarkable memory, his genial nature nevertheless found its greatest pleasure in social intercourse. He was a member of the Virginia Club, a Mason, a member of Pickett-Buchanan Camp Confederate Veterans, of the Board of Trade and Business Men's Association, and served as director and president of the Norfolk and Portsmouth Cotton Exchange. He was a member of the official board of Epworth Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in all the affairs of which he took the deepest interest. He died at his home in Norfolk, Va., June 19, 1913. "Mr. Perry's demise," it was written at the time, "is recognized throughout the community as a very great loss to the city, by reason of the deep interest he felt in everything that made for its good and for its advancement, and the help in the direction of its development which was afforded by his splendid business ability, and his intelligent and comprehensive grasp of all that makes for civic and commercial betterment. Always practical, he dealt not in generalities, but helped individuals to repair their broken fortunes, he guarded their interests, he gave them personal counsel, he shared their hopes and disappointments and endeared himself to countless numbers in his efforts to serve his fellow man, his city, his section, his country. His public spirit will long be remembered as well as his clean-handed intercourse with every man. It was well worth while to have lived such an active, useful, blameless life." Additional Comments: Extracted from: MAKERS OF AMERICA BIOGRAPHIES OF LEADING MEN OF THOUGHT AND ACTION THE MEN WHO CONSTITUTE THE BONE AND SINEW OF AMERICAN PROSPERITY AND LIFE VOLUME II By LEONARD WILSON, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF ASSISTED BY PROMINENT HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL WRITERS Illustrated with many full page engravings B. F. JOHNSON, INC. CITY OF WASHINGTON, U. S. A. 1916 Copyright, 1916 by B. F. Johnson, Inc. 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