George William Perry was born on October 20, 1846, in Granger, New York, to Albert and Jane Perry. His father was a farmer who owned $740 of real estate by 1850. The family lived in Granger, New York, until the 1850s, when they moved to Marlborough, Massachusetts. Perry attended school in Marlborough. By November 1864, he was eager to enlist in the Union army, but his older brother Henry dissuaded him.

 

He married Mary Alice Rice in Marlborough on July 7, 1868, and they had six children, including: Walter, born around 1870; Lulu, born around 1875; Bernie, born around 1879; George, born around 1880; and Mary, born around 1881.

 

Perry worked as a Universalist minister in several New England communities. In 1870, they were living in Lynn, Massachusetts, and Perry owned $2,300 of real estate and $800 of personal property. A decade later, they were living in Auburn, Maine. They moved to Rutland, Vermont, around 1886, and he helped establish the Rutland English and Classical Institute. By 1900, they were living in South Hero, Vermont, and Perry established what one writer called an “out-of-doors organization for boys” and a “boys’ camp on the west shore of South Hero.”

 

He served as Vermont’s state geologist and as curator of the state museum. He also reportedly “took many pictures for the travel books of the Vermont railroads.” He moved to Chester, Vermont, in the 1910s, and he died there of a cerebral hemorrhage on March 18, 1928.

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