Captain C. R. Perry entered the commercial marine and for thirteen years made voyages as mate, master or supercargo to Europe, South America and the East Indies. Even then, our flag floated in all seas. It had been raised in China, and seen at Nagasaki in Japan. In 1789 and ’90, the U. S. S. Columbus and Washington circumnavigated the globe, the first American war vessels to do so. The cities of Providence and Newport secured a large portion of the trade with Cathay.
The future hero of Lake Erie was ten years old, and two other children, a son and a daughter, played in the sea-captain’s home at Newport, when America’s greatest sailor-diplomat was born on the 10th day of April 1794. After her former young friend, at this time a promising young merchant in Philadelphia, the mother named her third son Matthew Calbraith Perry. The boy was destined to outlive his parents and all his brothers.
Matthew Perry was an eager, active, and robust child full of life and energy. His early youth was spent in Newport, at courtly Tower Hill, and on the farm at South Kingston. From the first, his mother and his kin called him “Calbraith.” This was his name in the family even to adult life. Few anecdotes of his boyhood are remembered, but one is characteristic.
When only three years old, the ruddy-faced child was in Kingston. Like a Japanese, he could not say l, as in “lash.” He walked about with a whip in his hand which he called his “rass.” There was a tan yard near by and the bark was ground by a superannuated horse. One of his older brothers called him an “old bark horse.” This displeased the child. He reddened with anger, and his temper exploded in one of those naughty words, which in a baby’s mouth often surprise parents. They wonder where the uncanny things have been picked up; but our baby-boy added, “If I knew more, I would say it.” For this outburst of energy, he suffered maternal arrest. Placed in irons, or apron strings, he was tied up until repentant.
That was Matthew Perry—never doing less than his best. Action was limited only by ability—“If I knew more, I would say it.” The Japanese proverb says “The heart of a child of three years remains until he is sixty.” The western poet writes it, “The child is father of the man.” If he had known more, even in Yedo bay in 1854, he would have done even better than his own best; which, like the boast of the Arctic hero, was that he “beat the record.”
| [1] | See [Appendix.]—Origin of the Perry Name and Family. |
CHAPTER II.
BOYHOOD’S ENVIRONMENT.
In the year 1797, war between France and the United States seemed inevitable, and “Hail Columbia” was sung all over the land. The Navy Department of the United States was created May 21, 1798. Captain Perry, having offered his services to the government, was appointed by President Adams, a post-captain in the navy June 9, 1798, and ordered to build and command the frigate General Greene at Warren, R. I. The keels of six sloops and six seventy-four gun ships were also laid. In May, 1799, the General Greene was ready for sea.
With his son Oliver as midshipman, Captain Perry sailed for the West Indies to convoy American merchantmen. He left his wife and family at Tower Hill, a courtly village with a history and fine society. Matthew was five years old. He had been taught to read by his mother, and now attended the school-house, an edifice, which, now a century old, has degenerated to a corn-crib.