Oliver Hazard Perry: Honor, Courage, and Patriotism in the Early U.S. Navy

By David C Skaggs

Hailed for his decisive victory over a Royal Navy squadron on Lake Erie in September 1813 and best known for his after-action report proclamation We have met the enemy and they are ours, Oliver Hazard Perry was one the early U.S. Navy s most famous heroes. In this modern, scholarly reassessment of the man and his career, Professor David Skaggs emphasizes Perry s place in naval history as an embodiment of the code of honor, an exemplar of combat courage, and a symbol of patriotism to his fellow officers and the American public. It is the first biography of Perry to be published in more than a quarter of a century and the first to offer an even-handed analysis of his career. After completing a thorough examination of primary sources, Skaggs traces Perry s development from a midshipman to commodore where he personified the best in seamanship, calmness in times of stress, and diplomatic skills. But this work is not a hagiographic treatment, for it offers a candid analysis of Perry s character flaws, particularly his short temper and his sometimes ineffective command and control procedures during the battle of Lake Erie. Skaggs also explains how Perry s short but dramatic naval career epitomized the emerging naval professionalism of the young republic, and he demonstrates how the Hero of Lake Erie fits into the most recent scholarship concerning the role of post-revolutionary generation in the development of American national identity. Finally, Skaggs explores in greater detail than anyone before the controversy over the conduct of his Lake Erie second, Jesse Duncan Elliott, that raged on for over a quarter century after Perry's death in 1819.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Naval Institute Press
• Release date: Jul 31, 2013
• ISBN: 9781612514390

Book preview

Oliver Hazard

PERRY

TITLES IN THIS SERIES

(listed chronologically by date of publication)

Confederate Admiral: The Life and Wars of Franklin Buchanan

by Craig L. Symonds

Andrew Foote: Civil War Admiral on Western Waters

by Spencer C. Tucker

Thomas ap Catesby Jones: Commodore of Manifest Destiny

by Gene A. Smith

Joshua Barney: Hero of the Revolution and 1812

by Louis Arthur Norton

Matthew Calbraith Perry: Antebellum Sailor and Diplomat

by John H. Schroeder

Mad Jack Percival: Legend of the Old Navy

by James H. Ellis

Commodore Ellsworth P. Bertholf: First Commandant of the Coast Guard

by C. Douglas Kroll

Thomas Macdonough: Master of Command in the Early U.S. Navy

by David Curtis Skaggs

Grace Hopper: Admiral of the Cyber Sea

by Kathleen Broome Williams

Stephen Decatur: A Life Most Bold and Daring

by Spencer Tucker

Erich Raeder: Admiral of the Third Reich

by Keith W. Bird

LIBRARY OF NAVAL BIOGRAPHY

Oliver Hazard

PERRY

HONOR, COURAGE, AND PATRIOTISM

IN THE EARLY U. S. NAVY

DAVID CURTIS SKAGGS

NAVAL INSTITUTE PRESS

Annapolis, Maryland

The latest edition of this work has been brought to publication with the generous assistance of Marguerite and Gerry Lenfest.

Naval Institute Press

291 Wood Road

Annapolis, MD 21402

© 2006 by David Curtis Skaggs

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

ISBN 978-1-61251-439-0 (eBook)

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

Skaggs, David Curtis.

Oliver Hazard Perry : honor, courage, and patriotism in the early U.S. Navy / David Curtis Skaggs.

p. cm. — (Library of naval biography)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Perry, Oliver Hazard, 1785-1819. 2. Ship captains—United States—Biography. 3. United States. Navy—Biography. 4. United States—History—War of 1812—Naval operations. 5. Lake Erie, Battle of, 1813. 6. United States—History—Tripolitan War, 1801–1805—Naval operations. I. Title.

E353.1.P4S47 2006

973.05092—dc22

[B]

2006016124

Print editions meet the requirements of ANSI/NISO z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

13121110987687654321

First printing

For Our Sons

Jason Tipton Skaggs and Philip Curtis Skaggs

with whom we are well pleased

Contents

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Chronology

1Joining the Navy

2Apprenticeship

3Building the Lake Erie Squadron

4The Test of Combat

5Hero of Lake Erie

6Ashore and Afloat

7Caribbean Commodore

Epilogue: The Perry-Elliott Controversy Continued

Notes

Bibliography

Further Reading

Index

Foreword

OLIVER HAZARD PERRY is among the most famous of American naval heroes. During the navy’s first century and a half of service, the names of a half-dozen combat commanders stand out—John Paul Jones of the American Revolution, Stephen Decatur of the Barbary Wars, Oliver Hazard Perry and Thomas Macdonough of the War of 1812, David Farragut of the Civil War, and George Dewey of the Spanish-American War. Although Oliver Hazard Perry served in all the foreign wars of the early republic—in the West Indies during the Quasi-War with France and the Mediterranean Sea during the Barbary Wars, and in the Caribbean countering piracy during the Latin American wars for independence—it was during the War of 1812 that he won immortality.

At the start of the war, British forces crossed into American territory and occupied Detroit, Michigan, which placed them in a position to control the upper Great Lakes. As most supplies reached the region via water, dominance of Lake Erie was the key to controlling the Old Northwest, and Perry’s triumph at the Battle of Lake Erie won control of the region for the United States. His victory forced the British to withdraw from Detroit and made possible the invasion of what is modern-day Ontario by forces under the command of Brig. Gen. William Henry Harrison.

Little wonder that Americans hailed Perry as the Savior of the Northwest. His victory contained all the elements of legend. During the battle his flagship, the Lawrence, flew a black and white flag bearing the cry of his friend James Lawrence, Don’t Give Up the Ship. The engagement with the British grew so hot that Perry had to abandon the Lawrence, and, taking the battle flag with him, transfer to the Niagara to continue fighting.

After winning the first decisive American victory on inland waters, Perry, eager to press operations against the British, scribbled a note to Harrison that began We have met the enemy and they are ours. This ringing phrase and his achievement made Perry a national hero, yet it was clouded with controversy leading to a virtual feud with his second in command, Jesse Duncan Elliott. While naval officers and even members of the general public took sides, Perry was ordered to the Caribbean to protect American shipping and lives from attack by the numerous factions in the Latin American wars for independence. During a voyage down the Orinoco River, Perry died from yellow fever. Told of Perry’s death, Stephen Decatur declared that, The American Navy has lost its brightest ornament!

It comes as no surprise that Perry was honored by his countrymen. By the 1830s, Frederick Marryat counted twenty-two towns and counties named for Perry. The Civil War brought with it new American heroes, but they did not diminish the stature of Perry, whose profile appeared on three U.S. postage stamps. Six warships were named for him as well, including the lead ship in a class of guided missile frigates—the Oliver Hazard Perry, FFG-7, commissioned in 1977.

Perry has not wanted for biographers, but all previous studies have their weaknesses, and the most recent having appeared a quarter of a century ago. It is time for a modern, scholarly assessment of the man and his career. David Curtis Skaggs is the ideal historian to produce such a study. A retired Army Reserve officer, Skaggs understands the dynamics of command. He is the author and editor of more than a dozen books, including a study of the Battle of Lake Erie and a biography of Thomas Macdonough, who faced many of the same challenges as Perry when each was ordered to construct a squadron of ships on an inland lake largely surrounded by wilderness. He brings to his study of Perry a firm grounding in primary sources and an understanding of the early nineteenth-century navy. While Skaggs acknowledges that Perry has some weaknesses, he finds that these were minor compared to the honor, courage, and patriotism which made Perry a great leader.

Skaggs’s assessment of Oliver Hazard Perry is a welcome addition to the Library of Naval Biography, a series that provides accurate, informative, and interpretive biographies of influential naval figures—men and women who have shaped or reflected the naval affairs of their time.

James C. Bradford

Preface

RAISED ON THE GREAT PLAINS near the geographic center of the lower forty-eight states about as far away as one can be from any of America’s four coasts, I never saw the ocean until I was twelve years old. Even joining the army to see the world didn’t help; I found myself deployed to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and Fort Riley, Kansas. The chances of academic employment brought me less than an hour’s drive and a short ferry ride from Put-in-Bay, Ohio, from whence Oliver Hazard Perry’s fleet sailed in quest of immortality. My introduction to the Battle of Lake Erie came in a somewhat unusual way—a retired army lieutenant colonel who managed the Bowling Green State University student union lectured on the topic and had his own, highly critical comments about Jesse Duncan Elliott’s conduct on 10 September 1813.

But the subject was of little interest to me until the mid-1980s when I became involved with several individuals who hoped to plan a celebration of the 175th anniversary of the battle. This led to conferences at Windsor, Ontario, and Put-in-Bay and the editing and publication of several papers presented thereat with a former graduate student of mine. It also brought me in contact with Chief Park Ranger Gerard Altoff of the Perry’s Victory and International Peace Memorial at Put-in-Bay and, eventually, to our collaboration in a history of the Lake Erie campaign entitled A Signal Victory.

I was now hooked into the study of the conflicts that raged along the watersheds of the North American lakes and the St. Lawrence River. As I wound down more than a third of a century of teaching at Bowling Green we held a scholarly conference discussing various aspects of that struggle. Eventually another of my former graduate students and I edited several of the papers presented at this conference in a volume entitled The Sixty Years’ War for the Great Lakes, 1754–1814.

One of the things that became apparent in my research was the lack of scholarly biographies of two of the American naval heroes of the inland seas—Thomas Macdonough and Oliver Hazard Perry. Because I knew few Macdonough papers existed I proposed to Professor James Bradford, editor of the Library of Naval Biography series, a joint biography of these two commanders of decisive American victories on Lake Erie in 1813 and on Lake Champlain in 1814. Jim accepted the idea reluctantly because he thought Macdonough deserved a separate study. When I found sufficient material on Macdonough, he leaped at the opportunity to expand the single volume into two. The first was published in 2003 as Thomas Macdonough: Master of Command in the Early U.S. Navy, and this is the second. What both Professor Bradford and I wanted was not just an analysis of their respective victorious campaigns, but complete biographies to include their post–War of 1812 careers and a look at their roles in the evolution of the U.S. Navy in the early nineteenth century.

In his study of how and why navies fight, Frank Uhlig Jr., the longtime editor of the Naval War College Review, proposed there were two absolute purposes for naval warfare and one conditional purpose. The two absolutes were to ensure first that friendly shipping can flow and second that hostile shipping cannot. After these two are secure, there flows a conditional purpose for naval operations—to project ground forces on a hostile shore. He then seeks to find examples of these purposes in American naval history, and the first exemplar that he cites is Oliver Hazard Perry’s role on Lake Erie during the War of 1812.

Perry’s victory over a Royal Navy squadron denied the British the capability of supporting their forces in what is now southwestern Ontario and southern Michigan, allowed the Americans to use the lake to support their forces in the region, and gave Perry the opportunity to land American ground forces on Canadian soil.¹ It fit perfectly into Uhlig’s formula of purposes for naval warfare. Perry’s victory did much to ensure Gen. William Henry Harrison’s victory at the Battle of the Thames a few weeks later and to preserve the northwestern boundary of the United States in the treaty negotiations that ended this conflict.

But Oliver Hazard Perry’s contributions to the early U.S. Navy involve more than merely a victory on the waters of this inland lake. He was a logistician of considerable merit who directed the construction of a squadron in the wilderness and brought it onto Lake Erie in defiance of an opponent’s blockading attempt. He was a self-taught educator, who pored over everything from belles lettres to naval science and passed on his love of inquiry to his subordinates. He was a consummate sailor whose ability to direct the handling of square-rigged sailing ships through calm seas and crisis situations demanded the respect of his contemporaries. He was a diplomat in an era when naval officers often found themselves in delicate negotiations with foreign governments.

Perry was a model for a generation of naval officers who founded the traditions of service, professionalism, and patriotism that dominate that armed force to this day. And, as we shall see, he had faults, especially when he felt his honor or the supposedly dishonorable conduct of others was at stake. Yet, for some strange reason, he has never merited a serious biographical study in the nearly two centuries since his famous victory. This is my attempt to provide such an analysis.

Acknowledgments

NO SCHOLAR CAN ACCOMPLISH his or her objectives without the services of dedicated archivists and librarians throughout the country. The unsung heroes of modern scholarship include the interlibrary loan personnel who secure numerous books and dissertations from institutions across the land. I am particularly indebted to those individuals at Bowling Green State University’s Jerome Library and East Carolina University’s Joyner Library who served this project so often and with such diligence and courtesy. The staffs of several other libraries have been particularly helpful, especially the Navy Library at the Washington Naval Yard and the National Archives in Washington, D.C.; the Naval War College Library in Newport; the John Hay Library and the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University in Providence; Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington; and the Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore.

Numerous individuals offered generous cooperation, both when Margo and I visited their institutions and in response to my many letters and e-mails seeking clarification of information. Among those deserving special mention are the following: Director John Dann and staff members Brian Leigh Dunnigan, Barbara DeWolfe, and the late John Harriman of the William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, provided invaluable assistance. (John Harriman’s special interest in the popular poetry of the War of 1812 provided me with several of the verses that begin many of the chapters of this book, as well as those that appear in Chapter 5.) Bob Graham and Stephen Charter of the Historical Collection of the Great Lakes, Bowling Green State University, allowed me special access to the documents housed in this useful collection. Michael Crawford, Christine Hughes, and Edward Marolda of the Naval Historical Center provided advice and support throughout the whole process of researching this book. The collections in the Center’s Early History Branch related to its Naval War of 1812: A Documentary History publication allowed me to circumvent numerous trips to other archival agencies. Going far beyond the call of duty has been the Center’s Charles Brodine who provided gracious assistance before, during, and after my visits to Washington. One learns to fully appreciate the role of archivists to researchers when one has the pleasure of utilizing the services of Frederick Bauman and the staff of the Manuscripts Division at the Library of Congress.

John Hattendorf and Evelyn Cherpak of the Naval War College helped an Army Reservist utilize the college’s library and John guided us to Perry’s haunts in Newport. Bertram Lippincott III, Newport Historical Society, and Laurel DeStefano, Special Collections Librarian, Redwood Library, were particularly invaluable in locating obscure manuscripts and publications relating to Perry’s life in their seaside city. In Providence we received great cooperation from Rick Stattler of the Rhode Island Historical Society. At the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York, Raymond Teichman and Nancy Snedeker provided easy access to the former president’s naval history collection.

J.C.A. Stagg, Papers of James Madison, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, gave me permission to view and copy Madison-related documents in the collection at his disposal. Both he and Brent Tarter of the Library of Virginia in Richmond provided assistance on the Virginia background of Capt. John Heath, USMC. Josh Graml and Cathy Williamson, Mariners’ Museum, Newport News, Virginia, graciously supported my study in their collections. James G. Cusick, curator, P. K. Yonge Library of Florida History, University of Florida, Gainesville, responded quickly and thoroughly to my query for information on the role of Perry and Amelia Island. Professor Robert Tinkler of California State University, Chico, prudently advised me about Perry’s life-long relationship with James Hamilton. Scott Harmon and Jim Cheevers of the U.S. Naval Academy Museum kept me advised on the changing status of the color and location of Perry’s battle flag in Annapolis.

Travel to visit many of these institutions was provided by special research grants. The Naval Historical Center and the Naval Historical Society awarded me two Vice Admiral Edwin B. Hooper Research Grants for travel expenses related to the research on this book. The John Nicholas Brown Center for the Study of American Civilization at Brown University provided another grant that supported travel related to this and the Thomas Macdonough biography.

No professor can accomplish research and scholarship without the support of departmental chairs; in my case the help and advice of Donald Nieman of Bowling Green State University and Michael Palmer of East Carolina University provided time and assistance that were important to this study’s progress.

The illustrative material in any volume greatly assists the reader in the comprehension of the text. In this case I owe particular debts to Dean Mosher of Fairhope, Alabama, whose paintings have graced the covers of two of my books and copies of others appear herein. I enjoin all readers to visit those on display at the Perry’s Victory and International Peace Memorial in Put-in-Bay. Another debt is owed to Amherstburg, Ontario, nautical artist Peter Rindlisbacher, whose work also was on the cover of one of my books, and who graciously consented for two of his illustrations to appear here. Dean’s and Peter’s quest for historical accuracy and drama are deeply appreciated by all who see their paintings. Readers will find the battle diagrams and maps drawn by geography professors Yu Zhou of Bowling Green State University and Karen Mulcahy of East Carolina University particularly useful. The Naval Historical Center graciously allowed me to reproduce maps from The Naval War of 1812: A Documentary History and Michigan State University Press the map of the Great Lakes Region 1795–1814 from The Sixty Years’ War for the Great Lakes.

Another debt is owed Donald F. Frank Melhorn Jr., Toledo attorney and historian, who transcribed James Cochrane’s The War in Canada, 1812–1814 from the Welsh Regimental Museum, Cardiff Castle, Wales. The trustees of the museum graciously consented for me to cite the document.

The editor of the Library of Naval Biography series, Jim Bradford, pushed me for completion of this volume and deserves accolades for persistence in seeing this project to completion. At the Naval Institute Press, Editorial Director Mark Gatlin and Managing Editor Linda O’Doughda provided timely and devoted editorial assistance that continued a tradition at that press for excellent service to its writers. Ms. Nina Seebeck of One Hundred Proof Editorial Services corrected my grammatical indiscretions, and Cdr. Tyrone Martin, USN (Ret.), gave yeoman’s service that saved me from a number, but I’m sure not all, of my naval and nautical faux pas.

Finally, there is the encore performance of my wife, Margo—companion, research assistant, and editorial critic—who again has guided me through another book. There are never enough rounds of applause for my CINCFAM.

Abbreviations

Chronology

Oliver Hazard

PERRY

CHAPTER 1

Joining the Navy

No patrimonial treasures can exceed

Theirs who by each heroic deed

Augment the fame of an illustrious sire

And to their children’s children leave

Th’ invaluable heritage entire.

Euripides, Ion

CHARACTER BUILDING BEGINS AT HOME. Nothing demonstrates this truism more fully than an encounter that occurred on a road outside Bristol, Rhode Island, as word of the American victory on Lake Erie spread across the state. A teamster met an old acquaintance:

Have you heard the latest news from the war? he asked.

No, was the reply.

Why, Madame Perry has whipped the British! said the first.

Madame Perry! You must mean her son, Oliver.

Well, what’s the difference? Everybody knows it’s the old lady’s spirit that did it.¹

At least some acquaintances of Christopher Raymond Perry and his wife, Sarah, immediately attributed the indomitable enterprise of the hero of Lake Erie to his mother. This woman not only supported her husband’s naval career but also sent all of her sons (three of whom would die on active duty) into the U.S. Navy and watched two of her three daughters marry naval officers. Her third son married into yet another naval family. Surely her clan was one of the mainmasts of early American naval leadership.

In a confidential memorandum written years later, Matthew Calbraith Perry declared: My mother was remarkable for possessing an extraordinary degree of personal Courage for a female and though gentle & ladylike in her usual manner nothing on earth could intimidate her. He continued by noting how she had a commanding and yet an affectionate Control over us all that however disposed we might be to do wrong we never thought of disobeying her and she maintained her influence over all her surviving children throughout her life. A reading of her few extant letters to her children and of those from them to her indicates just how mutually affectionate this relationship was.²

Whatever the sources of his esprit, her eldest son’s battle flag inscribed with Don’t Give Up the Ship and his memorable postbattle summary, We have met the enemy and they are ours, still inspire sailors of the republic. The first place to seek its origin is in Oliver Hazard Perry’s family background.

The Perrys of Rhode Island

The Perrys came to New England as part of the great Puritan migration of the 1630s. They were far more Separatist in their orientation than Puritan, and their settlement in New Plymouth colony, rather than Massachusetts, demonstrated their independence. Edward Perry, his widowed mother, a brother, and two sisters settled at Sandwich on Cape Cod in 1639.

Edward Perry was a Quaker in a community that saw the Society of Friends’s religious practices as disruptive of the status quo. He married Mary Freeman, daughter of the lieutenant governor of the colony, not in a formal ceremony before a clergyman or magistrate, but rather by the simple Quaker practice of clasping hands before a meeting of the Society. In 1654 the local court fined him £5 for unorderly proceeding, contrary to an order of the Court, about his marriage. For several years thereafter, Perry continued to pay the fine for his intransigence.

He was assessed additional fines for disagreements with officials in 1659 and 1663. He supposedly published a Warning to New England, which decried the region’s abominations in drunkenness, swearing, lying, stealing, adultery, and fornication, with many other Abominations. Although no copy of this now exists, Edward Perry certainly was not one to restrain himself when facing authority. Despite these confrontations with community leaders, Perry received several minor public offices in Sandwich, ironically including the post of inspector of the local ordinary, or tavern, that dispensed alcoholic beverages.

Two of Edward Perry’s sons would eventually move to Rhode Island where their religious beliefs were more tolerated than in Congregational Massachusetts, which absorbed New Plymouth in 1690 and persecuted Quakers vigorously. One of these sons, Benjamin Perry, settled in South Kingstown on the west side of Narragansett Bay in 1704.³

The Perrys were moderately successful farmers and minor government officials. They lived a middle-class life in a colony that enjoyed considerable prosperity from the production and export of the famous Narragansett Pacer saddle horse and an increasingly prominent role in the maritime trade of the eighteenth-century Atlantic commercial community. A son of Benjamin Perry, Freeman Perry (1732–1813), married Mercy, daughter of prominent Narragansett planter Oliver Hazard. Freeman Perry represented the last generation to practice the Quaker faith throughout his life in that branch of the Perry family with which we are concerned. Freeman and Mercy’s third son, Christopher Raymond Perry (1761–1818), was a renegade from Perry family customs, rejecting the pacifism that was at the core of his father’s family religious tradition.

Yet Christopher Raymond Perry may not have rebelled from his mother’s family beliefs, where there was neither a tradition of membership in the Society of Friends nor was military service abhorred.⁴ She apparently named him after her grandparents, Joshua Raymond (1677–1763) and Elizabeth Christopher (1698–1730). Joshua Raymond served as an officer in the Connecticut militia and as a deputy in the colony’s assembly. Her other grandfather, Lt. Col. George Hazard (1689–1743), was an important public official in Rhode Island’s provincial government.

Usually called by his middle name, Christopher Raymond Perry had an extraordinary career in naval and maritime service.⁵ Raymond was a teenager when the American Revolution began. Defying paternal family custom, he enlisted in a local militia group and allegedly fired the fatal shot that killed a pacifist, Loyalist neighbor. Estranged from his South Kingstown community, he enlisted in the army for a few months. Following this, he sailed before the mast on a privateer and soon found himself elevated to petty officer status on another such ship. Captured by the British, he spent some time on board the infamous prison hulk Jersey in New York harbor before escaping. Now even more rabid against his country’s foes, he joined the Continental Navy ship Trumbull, commanded by James Nicholson, and fought in a fierce battle with the British privateer Watt in June 1780. With the Trumbull laid up for repairs, Raymond refused to wait for more combat duty in the Continental Navy. He joined the crew of another privateer bound for the British home islands and, recaptured, was imprisoned at Newry, County Down, Ireland.

If this reads something like an outline for a Patrick O’Brian novel, what follows is even more fantastic. Sarah Alexander (1768–1830) was the orphaned ward of the prison commandant. Raymond formed a friendship with the young Scotch-Irish lass and her cousin, William Baillie Wallace. After an eighteen-month imprisonment he escaped, impersonated a British sailor, and wound up on the West Indian Island of St. Thomas from which he made his way back to Charleston, South Carolina.⁶ But the war was over. Enamored of both the sea and of Sarah Alexander, he secured a first mate position on a merchant ship bound for Ireland. Much to his delight the passenger list for the return trip included Sarah, her guardian James Calbraith, and his son Matthew. The voyage allowed Raymond to pursue his courtship of sixteen-year-old Sarah and they married shortly after docking in Philadelphia.

Family memories relate that Sarah Alexander Perry was beautiful, sprightly, vivacious, and dominating. She also instilled distinguished warrior ancestry into the Perry family. She descended from Sir Richard Wallace, an uncle of the famous Scottish braveheart Sir William Wallace. Despite her Caledonian ancestry, she brought adherence to the Church of England as part of her dowry. The young couple moved to South Kingstown where they lived with Raymond’s father, Judge Freeman Perry, for several years. Their first child, a son, was born there on 23 August 1785. Family tradition holds that Mercy Hazard Perry prevailed upon the young couple to name him Oliver Hazard in honor not only of his great-grandfather but also of Raymond’s recently deceased older brother, Oliver Hazard Perry.

According to the chronicler of the Hazard family, the young Perrys lived for a while in the home of bachelor William Robinson in the village of Rocky Brook. Robinson had a propensity to drink too much alcohol and on these occasions Sarah would put her hand on his arm and say, William, I think thee had better go to thy room for a little rest. Reportedly the bachelor would meekly leave the room with a parting bow to the ladies and a twinkle in his eyes.⁷

Four years later the family size increased with the birth of Raymond Henry Jones Perry (1789–1826), followed by Sarah Wallace Perry (1791–1851). By this time their South Kingstown home was too small for the growing family and Sarah was beginning to assert her independence. On 29 July 1793 Thomas Hazard of South Kingstown recorded in his diary that "Raymon [sic] Perrys wife went to Newport to live."⁸ It is interesting to note that nothing is said about Raymond moving to Newport. Was he at sea? We will never know, but it seems that Sarah Alexander Perry moved herself and three small children across Narragansett Bay without her husband’s assistance. Undoubtedly central to this move were the Perrys’ decisions to reside at the port from which Raymond sailed and to provide their children with broader educational and cultural experiences.

The years on the farm had been important ones for young Oliver. Here he had learned the benefits of hard work. Here he had learned the rudiments of horsemanship that made him an exception among sailors as one who could handle horses well. Matthew Calbraith later recalled how his father, Raymond, and brother, Oliver, had been exceptionally fond of horses and invariably owned the best available. It was on the farm where Oliver had also learned about family bonds as he participated with three generations of the Hazard-Perry clan in life together in a community where there were not just parents and grandparents, but also dozens of aunts, uncles, and cousins. It was a community to which he frequently returned, especially during the summer when the family let out the house in Newport to Southerners coming north to enjoy the cool breezes off the Atlantic.

The family took up residence at a home owned by Nathaniel Hazard on the northwest corner of Second and Walnut Street in the Easton’s Point section of Newport. The two-story, clapboard, gambrel-roofed house with a traditional colonial style four-room and central hall on each floor and a brick central chimney served as the Perry family home for more than forty years. Raymond and Sarah, however, did not acquire title to it until 1800.⁹

For an-eight year-old boy, Newport proved a different world from the routine of life on the Perry farm. The Point was a section of town where cabinetmakers, shipbuilders, ship suppliers, spermaceti manufacturers, and their shops resided just north of the Long Wharf. Numerous ship captains lived in the same neighborhood. The location allowed a young boy to learn about the talents necessary for constructing and outfitting a ship for sea. Here he received informal training in the necessity of logistics, that dismal science of military service. It was an education he put to good use on the shores of Lake Erie twenty years later. Like most preteens of his day, young Perry could handle a line, reef a sail, and steer the small craft that plied the waters of Newport harbor, and he occasionally ventured into Narragansett Bay.

The dangers of Newport’s wooden world were exposed in August 1797 when Francis Brinley’s extensive ropewalks went up in flames. The smoke from the immense tar-kettles, and from the large amount of the same combustible in barrels, was wafted by a strong wind into every section of town.¹⁰ In a few minutes Mr. Brinley’s large establishment was destroyed; the whole town barely escaped destruction until the community kept the blaze confined. Nothing could have conveyed more graphically to a young boy the dangers of fire in the wooden world of sailing ships.

During the 1790s the Perrys rented rooms to James and Elizabeth Hamilton of Charleston, South Carolina. Each summer they brought their family to the much cooler Narragansett Bay where they joined a large community of South Carolinians that included U.S. Sen. Jacob Read, Cong. John Rutledge Jr., and future politician John C. Calhoun, all of whom avoided the heat and humidity of the Low Country. Among the South Carolinians was young James Hamilton Jr. who was the same age as Oliver Perry and with whom he often played.

From the age of eight until thirteen, Oliver learned not only the lessons of logistical support for life at sea but also important lessons of scholarship and religion in this town. Certainly a critical reason for the move to Newport was to overcome the intermittent and indifferent education Oliver received in South Kingstown. Schoolmaster John Frazer, who excelled in the instruction of Greek, Latin, and mathematics, lived on New Church Lane. He took particular interest in Oliver Perry’s education for the sea and used to take him down to the shore at night to instruct the young lad in the art of celestial navigation. With able assistance from Oliver’s mother, Mr. Frazer fostered the love of learning that dominated much of Perry’s subsequent life and which he desired his midshipmen adopt. One of his schoolmates was James Hamilton Jr. from Charleston, whose mother chose to bring him to Newport for a year to secure an education from Mr. Frazer and other New England schoolmasters.

Years later Cong. James Hamilton Jr. informed the House of Representatives that Oliver’s morals and sense of duty could be traced to the enlightened instruction of his mother whose vigorous and cultivated intellect provided her son with a love for true glory, a contempt of death and danger, an ambition controlled by an exalted patriotism, and a magnanimity partaking of all the generous and noble sympathies of our nature.¹¹

Religious training must have been a core value Sarah Perry sought for her children when she moved the family to Newport. In January 1795, a few months after her fourth child, Matthew Calbraith Perry (1794–1858), was born, Sarah had all four children baptized at Trinity Episcopal Church by the Rev. William Smith.¹² This event constituted an important transition in the Perry family, whose members would become important lay and clerical figures in the Episcopal Church for generations to come.

Reverend Smith was instrumental in the revival of Trinity Church in the years following the Revolution. The Perrys became part of the growing congregation that occurred during Smith’s rectorship, 1789–97. We do not know whether C. Raymond Perry ever formally became a member of this congregation for no church records survive indicating that he assumed any formal duties in the parish, such as vestryman or as a member of various committees, but this absence does not definitely determine nonmembership.

For young Oliver, baptism at the rather late age of nine may have made the event particularly important. Shortly thereafter he received from the Right Rev. Samuel Seabury, bishop of Connecticut and Rhode Island, the rite of confirmation. For the rest of his life regular participation in the services of the Episcopal Church and reading from the Book of Common Prayer were important parts of his religious practice.

Theodore Dehon, rector of Trinity Church from 1797 until his elevation to the bishopric of South Carolina in 1810, was a significant figure in Oliver’s early life. The Dehon rectorship was particularly consequential in the development of his congregation despite his somewhat overdignified manner of gait, dress, and voice. His ornate dress, when contrasted with the somber attire of the town’s other clergy, made him as distinctive in Newport as the rich appointments and the fine choir of his church.

One observer who was not an Episcopalian admired Parson Dehon: Perhaps no minister in the town influenced, religiously, more minds and hearts than he. The tone of his discourses was emphatically serious. His gestures were effective, and his appeals in behalf of the cause he advocated wonderfully touching. I was strangely moved at the sight of tears falling from old and young eyes.¹³ A sense of the dignity of a calling, of duty, of decorum, of the importance of ritual, and of commanding presence were all characteristics that Reverend Dehon exhibited and young Master Perry would emulate.

But there was one characteristic of Trinity Church that reflects on an aspect of Perry’s life that has always flustered his biographers. Trinity’s vestry required its African-American congregants to sit in the balcony close to the church’s highly ornate organ. In front of these people was a frame with pear-shaped apertures, through which the Negroes could see but not be seen. How much this segregating and demeaning device affected Perry’s attitude toward blacks we will never know, for his relationship with members of that race remains controversial.

Whatever the sources of Oliver Perry’s personality, an important part of growing up in Newport was its association to the sea and the U.S. Navy. The warm waters of the Gulf Stream that laved the island’s shores prevented the accumulation of floating ice or of an ice blockade, providing an excellent harbor and glorious roadstead. Commercial and naval ships regularly visited the port. Many of the frigates of the early U.S. Navy, such as the Congress, Constitution, President, and United States, anchored in its commodious harbor. This alone might inspire a young lad to join the navy. But Oliver Perry had other inducements.

During the 1780s and ’90s Christopher Raymond Perry pursued a career as the captain of small ships trading out of Newport. While in the 1780s he sought a berth on a commercial ship, and within a few years he was captaining mercantile ships on distant voyages. Among these was the sloop Lively (of which he was briefly a co-owner), the schooner Fly, the sloop Fanny, and the brigantine Sukey. An indication of his rising stature in the community may be found in his being named the grand master of the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons when it was founded in Newport.¹⁴

Surviving records hint that Raymond Perry was not very responsible with financial matters. For instance, in 1800 his distant cousin Nathaniel Hazard of Newport signed a contract with Raymond and Sarah Perry in which, for Raymond’s payment of $1,000, Hazard conveyed the house in Easton’s Point to Sarah, not Raymond. Hazard also guaranteed to support, maintain, and educate the Perrys’ children. One should note that this agreement was written a few months before Raymond Perry’s dismissal from the naval service.

An 1819 inventory of Oliver Perry’s estate notes a $9,000 bond among the late Raymond Perry’s liabilities of which Oliver is responsible for half. This is the largest debt owed by Commodore Perry. When Minerva Rodgers visited the Perry home in Newport in the early nineteenth century, she noted the genteel poverty of the family who were good, plain people with Sarah Perry living in a poor house and a cold room and her two daughters very poorly dressed. The other Commodore Perry, Matthew Calbraith (known by his middle name inside the family), verified this when he wrote: Both my parents were fond of hospitality and were improvident in their expenditures and Consequently my father was often embarrassed financially.¹⁵

The records do not indicate whether Raymond Perry’s financial status contributed to his decision to leave the private mercantile world or not. But apparently he never lost his interest in regular naval service. At the time of the expansion of the U.S. Navy in the late 1790s, opportunity came his way to assume a naval billet during the Quasi-War with France. Secretary of the Navy Benjamin Stoddert demonstrated considerable skill in handing out shipbuilding contracts to various ports in a policy of binding coastal communities to the new Federal government that is familiar to this day. He also parceled the captaincies in the navy to prominent men in several states. During the Quasi-War with France, 1798–1800, Stoddert expanded the navy rapidly and had to rely on the recommendations of local men of prominence to fill vacant billets.

Pushing for Rhode Island’s share in the procurement monies and officerships was Newport’s