John B. Perry Papers

John Bulkley Perry, geologist, historian, and Congregational minister, was born in Richmond, Massachusetts on December 12, 1825. He received his A.M. from the University of Vermont in 1847, taught in Garlandsville, Mississippi until 1849, and then attended Andover Theological Seminary where he graduated in 1853. Ordained in 1855, Perry became pastor of the Swanton Congregational Church after filling two assistant pastorates at Sand Lake, New York (1854) and Hinesburg, Vermont (1854-1855). In 1865, while serving as Chaplain for the 10th Vermont Volunteers, Perry was elected delegate to the U.S. Christian Commission in Virginia. After the war, he accepted a pastorate in Wilmington, Vermont and remained there for two years. From 1868 to 1972 he was a lecturer in geology at Harvard University. During these years he also held posts at the University of Vermont (1869) and Oberlin College. Notable among his publications were eight discourses on the natural history of northwestern Vermont which appeared in A. M. Hemenway's Vermont Historical Gazetteer. Perry died in Cambridge, Massachusetts on October 3, 1872.