Item 0002 - Letter, 3 November 1870

Rev. John Bulkley Perry was born on December 12, 1825, in Richmond, Berkshire County, Mass.

He was a Congregational clergyman, geologist, and historian. He graduated from the University of Vermont (M.A., 1847) and the Andover Theological Seminary (1853). Ordained in 1855, Perry became pastor of the Swanton Congregational Church. In 1865, while serving as Chaplain for the 10th Vermont Volunteers, he was elected delegate to the U.S. Christian Commission in Virginia. After the Civil War, he accepted a pastorate in Wilmington, Vermont, and remained there for two years. From 1868 to 1872, he was a lecturer in geology at Harvard University. He also held posts at the University of Vermont (1869) and Oberlin College. He published several discourses on the natural history of northwestern Vermont, which appeared in A. M. Hemenway's Vermont Historical Gazetteer.

In 1856, he married Lucretia Leavenworth Willson (1832–1857), and in 1867, he married Sophia Harmon (1822–1914). He died on October 3, 1872, in Cambridge, Middlesex County, Mass.