Margaret LaFarge Perry (1876 - 1970)

Born 13 Nov 1876 in Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts, United States

Ancestors

Died 21 Jul 1970 at age 93 in Hancock, Hillsborough, New Hampshire, United States

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Biography

When Margaret LaFarge Perry was born on November 13, 1876, in Boston, Massachusetts, her father, Thomas, was 31, and her mother, Lydia, was 28. She had two sisters. She died on July 21, 1970, in Hancock, New Hampshire, at the age of 93, and was buried there.

Boston Herald, Boston, MA, THursday, July 23, 1970

PERRY - Formerly of Boston, died in Hancock, New Hampshire, Tuesday, July 21. Miss Margaret Perry; survived by three nieces, four great nieces and two great nephews. A memorial service will be held Saturday, July 25 at 2 p.m. from All Saints Church in Peterborough, New Hampshire. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made in her memory to a favorite charity.

Tucson Daily Citizen, Tucson, Arizona, Friday, July 31, 1970, Page 13

'Aunt Margaret's' Passing Ends Era

By BETTY MILBURN

CItizen Social Editor

Earlier this month, four lines in the Citizen obituary column noted that "Margaret Perry, 94, died peacefully in her sleep at her summer home in Hancock, N.H." So was written finis to an era, to a member of one of this nation's most distinguished families to the great lady many Tucsonians knew as "Aunt Margaret" for the past 11 years, she spent most of her time in the Old Pueblo. Margaret Perry was the daughter of a great turn-of-the-century scholar, THomas Sergeant Perry, and his artist wife Lilla Cabot Perry. Margaret's childhood summers were spent in Giverny, France, on the estate next to that of Claude Monet; her winters at 312 Marlborough Street in Boston amid the many Cabot relatives. Later, the Perry farm in Hancock, N. H., was a gathering place for most literary notables of that time. DUring on period in Margaret's life, her father accepted the chair of English literature at Keiogojku College in Tokyo and the family lived in Japan for four years. Yet few of Aunt Margaret's Tucson friends knew much about her background. Occasionally, on THanksgiving, she would reminise about holiday dinners in Boston at the home of her grandparents, Dr. and Mrs. Samuel Lowell Cabot. She recalled that she and the other children were fed at a second sitting, the 114 adult relatives requiring all available space at the first. SHe enjoyed remembering a day when her father took her and her two sisters, Alice (who later married Joseph Clark Grew, Ambassador to Japan) and Edith (cellist of note and later the wife of composer Edward Ballantine) to the roof of their Boston home to hear all of the churchbells of Boston peel in unison. At that moment, in 1884, Boston and "the rest of the civilized world" adopted Grrenwich Mean Time. Though she rarely spoke of her connection with her great forebearers, she was fond of the history they helped create, and somewhat, a student of that history. Margaret's grandmother, Frances Sergeant of Philadelphia, was the great graddaughter, by direct descent, of Benjamin Franklin. Margaret's father's resenblance to Franklin was striking, and indeed, was noticiable in Margaret. Thomas Sergeant Perry's father - Aunt Margaret's grandfather - was the son of the Commodore Perry who won the naval battle on Lake Erie in the was of 1812. A great uncle was the other Commodore Perry, who drew Japan from her self-imposed seclusion into the society of nations. Among the close associates of Margaret's father-men she knew as a child and young woman-were Moorfield Storey, William Henry and Garth James, William Dean Howells. Edwin Arlington Robinson, Booth Tarkington, Robert Herrick, Findley Peter Dunne and a host of others. Biographers give Thomas Sergeant Perry much of the credit for "discovering" Mark Twain.

It is Margaret's mother, however, whose memory dominates the Catalina Foothills home which Margaret shared with a courtest niece, Pat Holsaert, Lilla Cabot Perry's magnificent and varied paintings line the walls. Her daughters were among her favorite models, and margaret, at 10, holds her violin and looks placidly onto a spacious porch and into a patio filled with plants authorities say won't grow in Tucson. Aunt Margaret had a great feeling for the earth. She was a conservationist long before it was chic to be one. Says one biographer of THomas Sergeant Perry: "The eldest daughter, Margaret, sho remained unmarried, showed unusual capacity and enthusiasm not only for managing the farm (in Hancock) but also for lookiing after the home and performing the routine services which fell to her lot as her parents advanced in age." He continues to decribe Perry family life, here and abroad, among the greats of the era. What a treasury of golden memories Aunt Margaret must have possessed! ANd though few of us were able to share many, many of us shared a few. How great the Brahmin turn-of-the-century world; how different from our sometimes-sick Seventies. It becomes even more remote with the passing of Margaret Perry.

Sources

• Source Citation

Year: 1880; Census Place: Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts; Roll: 555; Page: 10D; Enumeration District: 657

Source Information Ancestry.com and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 1880 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2010. 1880 U.S. Census Index provided by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints © Copyright 1999 Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All rights reserved. All use is subject to the limited use license and other terms and conditions applicable to this site.

Original data: Tenth Census of the United States, 1880. (NARA microfilm publication T9, 1,454 rolls). Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29. National Archives, Washington, D.C.