CHAPTER II 

 TEMPLE PLACE 



1822-1850 



ELIZABETH CABOT CARY was born on Decem- 

 ber 5, 1822, at the house of her grandfather, Colonel 

 Perkins, in Pearl Street. It was a dignified street in those 

 days, lined with handsome dwellings and shaded by fine 

 trees, offering many attractions to merchants as a quarter 

 for residence because of its proximity to Fort Hill where 

 from a grassy park on the Revolutionary fortifications, still 

 unlevelled, they could survey the harbor and watch their 

 ships from India or China coming into port. But ten years 

 later the neighborhood of the Common was considered 

 more desirable, and in 1833 Colonel Perkins moved to 

 Temple Place where he had built a new house, now 

 occupied by the Provident Institute for Savings, and 

 established in the Pearl Street residence the school for 

 the blind that afterwards bore his name. At that time the 

 Cary family were living in Brookline, where they had gone 

 on their return to Boston in the previous year, but Colonel 

 Perkins speedily began to gather his daughters about him 

 in Temple Place and built a house for Mrs. Cary next his 

 own on the side toward the Common. Of the earlier years 

 of Elizabeth Gary's childhood, while her parents were liv- 

 ing in Brattleboro and New York and her grandparents 

 in Pearl Street, we have no record. Our first impressions 

 of her begin in Temple Place, and since she knew no other 

 home until her marriage, it is with this house that her youth 

 is completely identified. 



