ANCESTRY 5 



engaged in business in New York. In 1832 he brought his 

 family from New York to Boston and entered the firm of 

 his father-in-law, Perkins and Company, which had long 

 been successfully engaged in the China trade. Six years 

 later, however, the business was dissolved, and after a brief 

 interval, Mr. Cary became treasurer of the Hamilton and 

 Appleton Mills in Lowell, a position which he held until his 

 death in 1859. His life, as Mrs. Agassiz describes it in the 

 memoir quoted above, was that "of a quiet business man, 

 never brilliantly successful so far as his own fortunes were 

 concerned. His purity of character and unselfishness of con- 

 duct alone gave him the honored place he held in the com- 

 munity. Truly a good citizen and deeply interested in the 

 charities and educational interests of the state, he was 

 always ready to render unpaid service and was therefore 

 often called upon to act as trustee or director of public in- 

 stitutions. He was for many years a most active trustee of 

 the Institution for the Blind endowed by his father-in-law. 

 He was also the indefatigable friend of the Boston Athe- 

 naeum, the affairs of which possessed the greater interest 

 for him because he had marked literary tastes, for the pur- 

 suit of which his busy life allowed him little time. His 

 memoir of Colonel Thomas H. Perkins, printed only for 

 private circulation was a very spirited biographical sketch 

 and he left also a number of short, well-written papers on 

 matters of finance and manufacturing interests." 



Through their mother, Mary Perkins, his children had 

 an ancestry no less stamped by individuality than through 

 him. The Perkins family was first established in America 

 at Ipswich, Massachusetts. Here John Perkins, who emi- 

 grated to New England with Winthrop and Saltonstall 



