Maritime Newport

My family’s history includes we are descended from Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry.  While confirming this claim’s truth has been difficult, if not impossible, this tradition has still influenced how my family views our history.  Calbraith, as his family called him, grew up in the Rhode Island town Newport.  This town bordering the ocean was the place that influenced Calbraith to seek a career in the navy, and it is his accomplishments as a naval officer that inspire the family stories.

            The American roots of the family can be traced back to 1639 when Edward Perry moved to the New World, and settled in Sandwich, Massachusetts.  However, as his family began to experience religious persecution for their Quaker views, the family relocated to Rhode Island, an area with greater tolerance. 

Calbraith’s father was Christopher Raymond Perry; this is the man who began the naval heritage of the family.  Born a Quaker in Kingston, Rhode Island in 1760, he displayed fighting spirit that had not been present in previous generations of the family.  In his mid-teens, he joined the Kingston Reds, a group of local militia.  With this group, Christopher killed a neighbor, Simeon Tucker, when the he refused to pay war taxes or provide “honor requisitions of food and blankets” (Morison, 8) for the fledgling Continental Army.  These actions forced him and his fellow fighters to flee the area and led Christopher to briefly join the Continental Army.  Historians are not entirely sure how to interpret the “mass of later statements, rumors, and family gossip” (Morison, 9) about Christopher’s time fighting in the Revolutionary War.  He claims to have been captured and imprisoned on four different occasions and to have escaped on all. 

Christopher was soon a privateer and worked on four different vessels.  An unknown vessel on which Christopher served was captured and Christopher was sent to prison not far from Belfast.  Surprisingly, the warden of the prison let him out on parole where Christopher came to know the locals and would hunt and drink with them.  During a drinking party, two young girls accidentally entered the room, and promptly left, but Christopher had caught sight of one and remarked, “There goes my future wife!” (Schroeder, 3).  Soon after, he broke his parole and managed to return to the United States.  When he returned, the war had ended, and he was able to carry out the promise he had made to himself: to marry Sarah Wallace Alexander, the girl he had seen back in Ireland.  He sailed to Ireland where he learned that Sarah had been orphaned and was going to the United States to live with relatives.  Christopher had six weeks in which to court Sarah during their journey to the United States.  Upon their arrival, they were notified that the couple that was to care for Sarah had died of yellow fever in an epidemic sweeping the city.  Christopher instantly proposed a solution.  He and Sarah were married immediately and left the infected city as soon as soon as they could. 

Christopher and Sarah went to South Kingston, Rhode Island and were welcomed by the family who had not seen Christopher since he fled after killing Tucker.  One year later, their first son, Oliver Hazard, was born.  Oliver, like many of his younger siblings to follow would join the navy; Oliver is best known for defeating the British at the Battle of Lake Erie during the War of 1812. 

It is this area in Rhode Island that had a great impact on young Calbraith’s life, which in turn, would affect the stories my family tells about our history. 

In the early 1790s, the family moved to the Point section of Newport, where they built a house that was scarcely one block from the bay.  It is in this house that Calbraith was born in 1794.  He was named Matthew James Calbraith Perry after the man and his son who accompanied Sarah on her journey to America.  With occasional visits to the family’s Tower Hill farm, Calbraith spent all his childhood in the house his parents had built.  Along with his friends, he played along the shores, swam, and watched many different ships come and go across the waters of the bay.  When visiting downtown Newport, he would be surrounded by the hubbub and excitement of a teeming seaport.  All this action had a major impact on Calbraith’s lifelong love of the ocean and sea.

When his older brother Oliver joined the navy and served onboard Christopher Perry’s vessel in the navy, Calbraith received another link to the sea.  While on leave, his brother would regale the younger Perry children with tales, some true, some exaggerated, of his adventures at sea.  Through his own experiences with living in proximity to the ocean and the stories he would hear through his family members, Calbraith made the decision to join the navy, and enlisted at the age of fourteen. 

            The maritime environment in which Calbraith grew up undoubtedly had a lasting effect on him and influenced his career choice.  The sights, sounds, and experiences that Newport provided the young boy must have been a major influence on his decision to enlist in the navy.  Without this environment, my family may never have been able to count a famous naval commander as our ancestor, for Calbraith may have never been influenced to join the navy.

Schroeder, John H.  Matthew Calbraith Perry.  Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2001. Print.

Morison, Samuel Eliot.  “Old Bruin” Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry.  Canada: Atlantic Little, Brown, 1967. Print.