The Perin family
Eleven generations from Rehoboth to Portland, and the letter we lost on the way.
The arms recorded for Perin of Ashby de la Zouch in the 1619 visitation of Leicestershire, painted from the written description. The crest, a golden pine cone among green leaves, is drawn above the shield in a seventeenth-century manuscript copy of the visitation; the helm and mantling were added for this painting. Whether our family descends from that one is still under investigation; chapter eight sets out what we know.
Grandpa,
You have kept this family’s story for a long time: the blog, the letters, Stanley’s narrative, the chart that reaches further back than anyone else’s. This is my attempt to add to it rather than repeat it, by going back to the records themselves and seeing what holds.
A lot holds. Ezra’s inventions have patents with his name on them. One of his nephews became governor of Nebraska. The English family whose arms Glover printed is real, and so are its arms; what no one has yet found is the record that joins our John to it, and that is one of the doors the letters to the archives are meant to open. Some questions are still open, and I have marked them as open rather than guess.
I remember Great-grandma Esther. That memory is what makes the older names feel like people to me. I hope these pages do the same for you.
With love, Aubrey
The chapters
They are written to be read in order, but each one stands on its own.
- Eleven generations and one less RFrom John Perrin, who was at Braintree by 1640, to Grandpa — and the ancestor who decided the family name had one letter too many.
- WestwardAfter the Revolution the family left Massachusetts for good. Lemuel took them to Ohio; his son John built a brick house in Indiana and filled it.
- Ezra, who made thingsThe family always said Ezra was an inventor. The patent office agrees, twice — and his own letter explains the invention he gave up on.
- Charles, Geraldine, Arthur and EstherThe generations Grandpa knew, and the people who kept the family’s memory before him.
- The other half of every generationA surname follows one thread. Grandpa has sixteen great-great-grandparents, and only one of them was born a Perin.
- The Rice lineEzra’s middle name was his mother’s surname. Followed back, it leads very probably to a boy carried off to Canada in 1755, and to one of the best-recorded families in New England.
- Cousins in the recordOff the direct line, the family produced a governor, a surgeon general’s officer with a passion for genealogy, and a postmistress whose letters survive.
- The arms, England and FranceEarlier family historians pointed to an English pedigree and a coat of arms. We went and read the pages they cited.
- The eleventh generationEvery chapter so far ends with Grandpa. This one is about him: the schoolboy, the minister, the teacher of teachers, the man who began again and built something of his own, and the questions only he can answer.
- What service asksOn quiet choices, the cost of service, and what we owe the people who come after us. Written for Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, 2026, and for every day of remembrance.
- The questWhat we have asked the archives for, what we hope they hold, and the questions only Grandpa can answer.
- Sources, and how to read this historyEvery claim in this history is marked by what supports it. This page explains the marks and lists the sources.
How to read this history
Family history is full of things that are probably true. Every person and claim here carries one of four marks, so you can see at a glance what it rests on.
- Seen in recordsA record we have actually read supports it: a patent, a town register, a will, an obituary, a letter.
- Published genealogyA published family history or county history says so, most often Glover Perin’s genealogy of 1885. Good, careful work, but compiled from letters and memory.
- Family chartIt comes from Grandpa’s family chart and has not yet been checked against records.
- Probable, not provedThe case is strong, and one document would settle it.
Family stories are given as stories, with the name of whoever told them.
Letters have gone out to archives in Indiana, Nebraska, Minnesota, Michigan and London asking for the family papers they hold, and more are being prepared. The quest keeps track of them, and what comes back will be added here.