Thomas Handasyd Perkins
| Thomas Handasyd Perkins | |
|---|---|
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| Born | December 15, 1764 |
| Died | January 11, 1854 (aged 89) Brookline, Massachusetts |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Shipping magnate |
| Net worth | USD $3 million at the time of his death (approximately 1/1116 of US GNP) |
Colonel Thomas Handasyd Perkins, or T. H. Perkins (December 15, 1764 – January 11, 1854), was a wealthy Boston merchant and an archetypical Boston Brahmin. Starting with bequests from his grandfather and father-in-law, he amassed a huge fortune. As a young man he was a slave trader in Haiti, a Maritime Fur Trader, trading furs from the American Northwest to China, and then a major smuggler of Turkish opium into China.
His parents, James Perkins and Elizabeth Peck, had ten children in eighteen years. When Perkins was twelve, he was in the crowd which first heard the Declaration of Independence read to the citizens of Boston. The family had planned to send Perkins to Harvard College, but he had no interest in a college education. In 1779 he began working, and in 1785 when he turned 21 he became legally entitled to a small bequest that had been left to him by his grandfather Thomas Handasyd Peck, a Boston merchant who dealt largely in furs and hats. Until 1793 Perkins engaged in the slave trade at Cap-Haïtien Haiti.
In 1785, when China opened the port of Canton to foreign businesses, Perkins became one of the first Boston merchants to engage in the China trade. He sailed on the Astrea to Canton in 1789 with a cargo including ginseng, cheese, lard, wine, and iron. On the trip back it carried tea and silk cloth. In 1815 Perkins and his brother James opened a Mediterranean office to buy Turkish opium for resale in China.
Perkins was also a major industrial investor within Massachusetts. He owned the Granite Railway, the first commercial American railroad, which was built to carry granite from Quincy quarries to Charlestown for construction of the Bunker Hill Monument and other city buildings in Boston. He also held significant holdings in the Elliot textile mills in Newton, the mills at Holyoke and Lowell, New England canals and railroads, and lead and iron mines including the Monkton Iron Company in Vermont. In addition, Perkins was politically active in the Federalist Party, serving terms as state senator and representative from 1805–1817. Additionally, he invested in many of the mills on Lowell, MA including Appleton Mills.
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