William Hayes Perry

William Hayes Perry, known as W.H. Perry, (1832–1906) was a 19th-century lumber merchant and financier in Los Angeles, California. He was known as "a masterful man whose influence and backing has been felt for fifty years in the development of Southern California."

Perry was born on October 7, 1832, in Newark, Ohio, the son of John and Ann Perry. He went to school and learned a cabinetmaker's trade in Newark. At the age of twenty-one he made his way with William Welles Hollister and a party of some fifty men and five women, with a collection of cattle, sheep and horses, from Council Bluffs, Iowa, to Los Angeles by way of Salt Lake City and San Bernardino. It was the first transcontinental sheep drive, taking a year to complete.

He arrived in Los Angeles either in 1853 or February 1854. Perry later recounted that after his long trip he was "worn out, dead broke and almost naked." He walked into a store and asked the merchant for "the cheapest suit of clothes you have, and my face must be my security for payment until I get a start." The proprietor offered him two suits on credit — one for work and a more expensive one for church.

Perry was married to Elizabeth M. Dalton in 1858, and they had two daughters who survived him when he died on October 29, 1906 – Mamie Perry (Davis) Modini-Wood (Mrs. C.M. Wood) and Florence (Mrs. E.P. Johnson Jr.) and a son, Charles Frederic Perry.

The couple's youngest son, Eugene Ames Perry, had been sickly with a "long and tedious illness," and his parents took him to "the foremost physicians in New York, but they were unable to do him any good, and a later visit to leading San Francisco physicians was attended by no better success." He died December 18, 1887.

Perry died October 29, 1906. His widow, Elizabeth M. Perry, received half the community property, and Perry's will provided that on her death the estate should go to his children or their heirs. A son, Charles Frederic Perry, and his wife, Ada, adopted Marion Rebecca Perry, and after both Charles Frederic and Ada had died, 15-year-old Marion's claim for a share of the estate was contested by W.H. Perry's children, Mamie B. Modini-Wood and Florence Johnson. There being no law bearing on the case, a settlement was reached: Marion had asked for the sum of $318,740.95.

He was buried in Evergreen Cemetery after services at his residence, 20 St. James Park. William Mulholland was one of his pallbearers.

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