PERRY, Elias W. (1833-1925)

PERRY

Posted By: Karon Velau (email)
Date: 9/1/2020 at 13:25:16

Elias Watson Perry
(November 15, 1833 – September 28, 1925)

Death Calls E. W. Perry
Funeral of Pioneer Merchant Will Be Wednesday at 2:30
E. W. Perry, one of Indianola’s oldest settlers and a pioneer merchant, died at his home in this city early Monday morning from heart failure. He would have been 92 years old had he lived until the 15th day of November. For the past two weeks he had been suffering with the prevailing complaint of “summer flu,” but had been apparently on the mend until Thursday evening, when he took a relapse and was threatened with pneumonia. He rallied from the attack, but suffered with shortness of breath indicating a failing heart. For several nights he got little sleep. Sunday he was dressed nearly all day and sat on the porch in the evening. His son Herbert and daughter, Miss Anna, spent the night with him. About midnight they turned him to make him more comfortable and visited him at frequent intervals. A few minutes after four Miss Perry found him sleeping quietly. At 4:25 she returned to find that the heart had stopped beating, death having come quietly in slumber.
The funeral service will be held from the late home in the southeast part of town Wednesday afternoon at 2:30 in charge of the Masonic lodge. In the passing of Mr. Perry Indianola loses one of those early pioneers whose efforts made the community and shaped its ideals. So far as Mr. Perry knew, the only people now living here, who were here when he came to the town, are Mrs. M. R. Barker, Mrs. J. H. Whitney, Mrs. John Mayers and Miss Hanna Babb. A. W. Barker and Mrs. W. H. Berry were then little tots of four and two years.
It was in 1855 Elias Watson Perry came to Indianola from Virginia with Joseph Watson, father of J. H. and J. O. Watson. Mr. Watson and Mrs. W. C. Tarleton, father of Don Tarleton, had come out from Virginia earlier and gone back. Mr. Perry returned with Mr. Watson. Mr. Perry secured work as a clerk in the store of Cheshire Brothers. After clerking for the Cheshires two years he was married August 13, 1857, to Miss Harriet Russell, whose parents had come from eastern Ohio. For a year after marriage they lived at old Hammondsburg, where Mr. Perry had a store. After leaving Hammondsburg they returned to Indianola, which has been Mr. Perry’s home ever since. Mrs. Perry died in January 1911, after a wedded life of more than 53 years. To the Perry’s seven children [that] have been born, two of them, Virginia and Raymond, died in infancy. Those surviving are Frank H. of South Pasadena, California, Ned W., Herbert O., and Anna H., all of Indianola. Will Perry died at Ames, where he was in business, some ten years ago. There are also nine grandchildren and three great grandchildren. D. W. Perry was one of the oldest Masons in the state of Iowa and took much pride in the long period of his membership in the order. He was a member of the Indianola school board for a number of years and as president of the board signed the first diploma issued by the Indianola high school.
He was born at Gains Furnace, Virginia, November 15, 1833. His father was a blacksmith. His grandfather was killed in the war of 1812. When a small child his parents moved to Morgantown, now in West Virginia, and later to Fairmont. He arrived in Indianola seventy years ago next Thursday. He has told much of his early experiences to his two grandchildren, Everett and Ernestine Perry, who have a fund of historical information at first hand from his lips, as declining years gave him time to relate to them the recollections which came flocking back as the years multiplied. When a young man he was cashier in an eating house at Fairmont on the Baltimore & Ohio railway and remembered many times collecting a dinner bill from the father of John W. Davis, democratic candidate for president in 1924. Mr. Perry was born a Virginia democrat and, in national matters, remained consistently a democrat to his death. His first presidential vote was cast for Buchanan in 1856, and he has never missed casting his vote for the democratic candidate every four years from that time until the present. He never switched over to vote in a republican primary. When the Civil War came he enlisted in Company D, 34th Iowa infantry, and was commissioned first lieutenant. He went south with the regiment, but after a short service was honorably discharged at Helena, Arkansas, because of sickness. He remained active in his business for a remarkably long period, and it is only within very recent years, when feebleness has held him, that he has broken off his lifelong habit of going to the store every day. Mr. Perry was successful as a business man in a very marked degree. Under the older customs of business, when nearly everything was sold on credit, he had that invaluable insight which enabled him to know whom to trust. Because of this he could give the pioneer community a genuine mercantile service, rewarded by a trade that extended far and wide over the countryside. His familiar figure will be missed from the streets of the city and his place as a pioneer of the community will never be filled. [Copied from a scrapbook at the Warren County Historical Society Library, Indianola, Iowa]