Westward

Lemuel

Lemuel Perin was born at Rehoboth on 21 October 1749, the eldest of Jesse’s twelve children. Glover’s genealogy says he served in the Revolutionary War under Captain John Perry, then lived at North Adams in the Berkshires before taking the family to Ohio, “near Cincinnati.” He died near Connersville, Indiana. Published genealogy

Captain John Perry of Rehoboth commanded an independent company of minutemen that marched from the town on the Lexington alarm of 19 April 1775, the day the war began, and went on to command a company in Colonel Timothy Walker’s Bristol County regiment at the siege of Boston. Lemuel was twenty-five that spring and, as far as we know, still living in Rehoboth, so he very probably marched with them. The family remembers him as a minuteman; the roll that would name him has not yet been read. Probable, not proved

Two sources disagree about when. Glover gives 9 July 1822. An 1880 history of Clermont County, Ohio, written while his grandchildren were still alive, gives 23 October 1814. Grandpa’s database, drawing on FamilySearch, sides with Glover and adds a place: buried on 10 July 1822 in the Klum Cemetery, Columbia Township, Fayette County, Indiana. Family chart Neither date has been checked against a gravestone or probate record yet, and his military service has not yet been found in the Revolutionary War records. Both are on the list in the quest.

Martha is named in Glover’s book, but the old print is hard to read and the surname has been copied several ways. The Clermont County history settles it as Martha Nash, born 3 March 1749, daughter of Simeon and Martha Nash. That gives the family a new line to follow, though her parents have not yet been confirmed from Massachusetts records. Published genealogy

Perin’s Mills

Lemuel’s son Samuel went to Ohio in 1806 and stayed. He settled in Clermont County, east of Cincinnati, where the place he built up was called Perin’s Mills. The 1880 county history gives him a long entry: millwright, merchant and distiller, county commissioner and member of the state legislature, a Universalist who built a meeting house that several denominations could share. He died there in 1865. His son Glover became an army surgeon and the family’s first genealogist; chapter seven has his story. Published genealogy

John, the builder

Our line runs through Lemuel’s eldest, John, born 18 December 1774. Most of what we know about his character comes from the narrative Grandpa’s uncle Stanley E. Perin wrote, which Grandpa keeps on his blog.

Stanley says John was a skilled carpenter, brick maker and mason, and that he built a brick house about two miles south-southwest of Connersville, Indiana, arranging part of its upper floor as the county’s first Masonic lodge room. Family account, Stanley E. Perin

Stanley also tells the family’s best animal story. John was in the woods when he heard his favourite dog howling, and found it being attacked by a bear. He had only a club. He killed the bear with it. Family account, Stanley E. Perin

Two wives and fifteen children

John married twice. With Hephzibah Williams, married in 1797, he had three children: Vashty, who died at two, Phila, and Hiram. With Rachel Rice, married in 1803, he had twelve more. The marriage to Rachel is in the town records of Charlemont, Massachusetts, a detail that turns out to matter a great deal. Seen in records

Isaac’s death puts the family inside a piece of national history. The Moselle blew up its boilers as it left the landing at Cincinnati on 25 April 1838, one of the worst steamboat disasters of its time. Glover records Isaac, aged twenty-four, among the dead. Published genealogy

Glover gives John’s death as 21 January 1866. He was ninety-one. Grandpa’s database puts his death a few days earlier, on 18 January, and places it, and Rachel’s on 11 June that year, at Blue Grass in Scott County, Iowa, where both were buried. So the old couple ended their lives in Iowa, the state where their grandson Charles had been born. Family chart

The backsaw and the square

The object that ties these generations together is a pair of tools. Stanley wrote that John bought a backsaw and a tri-square in 1793, made in Sheffield, England. They passed to Ezra, then to Ezra’s son Charles, then to Charles’s son Arthur in Portland, Oregon, and Stanley added that the square was still nearly as accurate as the day it was bought. Family account, Stanley E. Perin

That is four generations, father to son, handing down the tools of a trade, and there is a fifth: Grandpa has them. Grandpa’s own account, October 2026 They are the oldest things this family owns.