Henry H. Perry Papers

Background on Henry H. Perry

Henry Haines Perry was the middle of three children of the investment banker Arthur H. Perry and Emma Amelia (Foster). Born in Westerly, Rhode Island, on Feb. 1, 1884, Perry graduated from Harvard (1907) and Harvard Law School (1910), and practiced law only briefly before joining his father's investment house. He enjoyed a prosperous career there, becoming Vice President and Treasurer.

A Mayflower descendant on one side of his family, Perry was raised a Quaker and became a prominent figure in the New England Yearly Meeting. Following his retirement from business at the age of 56, he devoted himself to Quaker concerns, becoming a trustee and clerk of the Friends Meeting in Cambridge, where he had been a member since 1916, and becoming regional vice chair of the Friends Committee on National Legislation and a member of the Board for the American Friends Service Committee. With the American entry into the Second World War, the AFSC asked Perry to serve as director of three of the Civilian Public Service Camps in Massachusetts: Royalston, Petersham, and Ashburnham. Conceived in negotiations between the Selective Service and the major peace churches, and written into the Selective Service Act of 1940, these camps were intended to provide moderate conscientious objectors with an alternative to direct participation in the war on the one hand, and imprisonment for refusing cooperation with the war on the other.

CPS internees were theoretically assigned to "work of national importance," addressing war-related employment shortages in critical areas such as fighting forest fires, maintaining and repairing telephone lines, working for the Soil Conservation Service or in mental hospitals, and clearing debris left in the wake of the 1937 New England hurricane. Living in Petersham with his wife Edith (Nicholson), Perry served as director of the camps from June 1941 until October 1942 when they were merged or discontinued.

After leaving CPS work, Perry returned home to Dover, Mass., where he remained active in educational causes, serving as chair of the International Student Seminar in Japan and India in 1950 and as a trustee of Wheelock College, among other endeavors. He died on November 17, 1972, leaving his second wife, Elizabeth (Foster), a son, five daughters, and large contingent of grandchildren.