CHAPTER II 
TEMPLE PLACE 
1822-1850 
LIZABETH 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 Cary’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. 
