| Touchet's & Perry's of Vermilion Parish |
| Robert Samuel Perry 1st |
Robert Perry was born in Westmoreland County, PA (east of Pittsburgh), but his father Samuel Perry moved to Campbell County, KY when he was very young. On his marriage document, written in French by the Catholic priest, he calls himself a native of York County, PA (and signed his name very large). He received the best education that Kentucky could offer. According to his youngest daughter Mary Augusta, he ran away from home at the age of 19, carrying all his possessions in a little bundle. His widowed mother Mary McGrew wrote to him, "Ah, my son, when you were small you trod upon my toes, but now you tread upon my heart." Settling in Louisiana, he enlisted on Sept. 26, 1814 for six months as a first lieutenant in Captain Fortune Penne's Company of Drafted Militia, Col. Alexander De Clouet's Regiment, stationed at year's end at Ft. St. Leon where he was sick on March 31, 1815. Tradition says that he fought in the Battle of New Orleans under Andrew Jackson, alongside a ragged, outnumbered bunch of American adventurers and French pirates. Commerce between New Orleans and Texas was getting ready to boom. In 1818 he bought a tan yard on the Grand Prairie near Opelousas, and married Ezemily Booth two years later. By 1827, he owned stores on each side of the Vermilion River, with a tan yard across from them. He also owned a cotton plantation, a corn plantation and a sugar plantation, besides other holdings. By 1830, Robert also had two keel boats and a schooner, and his career on deck gave him the title "Captain." Later his son Augustus ran the shipping business. One 56-foot, 56-ton schooner which Robert owned was named "Augustus" in 1832. He owned the "Lady of the Lake" in 1833 and the "Kosciusko" in 1838, all two-masted but smaller than the "Augustus. On Bayou Chicot, he owned a tavern and a mercantile store. He also acquired land in Texas. Colonists gave him some of it as payment for supplies, offering land certificates or "skrip" instead of money. So, as the late historian Dennis Gibson points out, Robert Perry was strategically placed on both land and water routes between New Orleans and the new Texas colonies, with outposts on the Opelousas Road and the Old Spanish Trace. Lily Wood, his 1840 antebellum home built by slave labor, still stands across the river from Perry, LA, and has been nominated to the National Register of Historical Place. It was sold in 1901 for $11,500 to Alcide and J.G. LeBlanc, whose family still owns it. In 1817, Captain Robert Perry already owned a tan yard on the Vermilion Bayou when he was awarded a contract to build a bridge across the bayou on property he owned near his tan yard. The settlement that was called Perry's Bridge (or in French, Pont Perry) became the main commercial center of the bayou, predating the founding of Lafayette in 1823 and Abbeville in 1845. It probably predated Robert Perry as well, since the cemetery in the town may be older than 1800. The bridge must have been used heavily for cattle drives, since it needed frequent repairs. It was remodeled in 1828 to allow boats to go upriver to Lafayette. Robert Perry owned a store underneath the bridge. In 1844 Robert Perry's son-in-law Daniel O'Bryan sponsored the bill in the Louisiana Legislature that created Vermilion Parish (and made Robert Perry the parish's first sheriff), and he arranged for the parish seat to be located at the town of Perry's Bridge, where his father-in-law owned significant property. The local Catholic priest, Father Antoine Megret, had asked Robert Perry about moving the Catholic chapel to Perry's Bridge. According to one tradition, Captain Perry coolly offered the priest a low swampy spot near the bayou. Or perhaps Megret disliked the fact that Perry's Bridge, already part of a Methodist circuit, was a center of Protestantism. At any rate, Father Megret began subdividing his property a few miles upriver near his chapel and offering lots for sale. The new town was named Abbeville and within a year it was larger than Perry's Bridge. After further wheeling-and-dealing by Megret, the question of moving the parish seat was placed on the ballot in 1848, and Abbeville won out over Perry's Bridge by a single vote. Abbeville was officially incorporated in 1850, but court sessions were still held in Robert Perry's store. Rivalry was continuing between Perry's Bridge and Abbeville over the location of a permanent courthouse, which had not yet been built. Concern over the growing influence of Abbeville motivated 44 inhabitants of the Perry's Bridge area to pledge money to build a Catholic church in Perry -- and some of them weren't even Catholic! Robert Perry himself offered $250, many times more than anyone else except John Stiffel (who pledged $100), while Daniel O'Bryan pledged $25. Ironically, all of Robert Perry's children later converted to Catholicism, beginning with Mary Alzenith Perry. The Catholic church was never built in Perry, though a Methodist church was, and in 1854, Abbeville was made the parish seat of justice. About the same time steamboats replaced the overland cattle routes from Texas to New Orleans that had been so important to Perry's Bridge. The railroads bypassed the town at the turn of the century. Today, Perry, LA is not very big. According to Robert's daughter, most of his wealth consisted of slaves, so his estate dwindled drastically after the Civil War. Even so, at his death in August 1852, Robert Perry owned much property. Besides his holdings in Vermilion Parish, he possessed fourteen parcels of land in St. Landry Parish, valued at $5396.64. These included the fifty-acre "Stephen's Place," adjacent to a tract on Bayou Chicot, which was next to another 40-acre tract. Perry owned a store in the village of Bayou Chicot, occupied by William Kenhead. Elsewhere in St. Landry Parish, he owned tracts of 162, 168, 177 and 247 acres each, plus five more 160-acre tracts and "Hanchett's Tanyard." In 1849, Perry had also purchased much of the real estate of his wife's relative Robert E. Booth in Jefferson County, Texas. BIRTH: letter from daughter Sr. Norbert History of Vermillion Parish, p. 11-12, 116, 231, 238-240, 261 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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