John Summerfield Berry was born on June 18, 1822, in Baltimore, Maryland. He grew up and attended school in Baltimore, and he attended Dickinson College. He worked as a merchant and manufacturer. He married Alverda M. Waters on April 2, 1846, but she died on June 26, 1850. He supported the Knox Nothing Party, and he served in the state legislature in 1857. He became Speaker of the House the following year. He married Emily Berry around 1860, and the couple had no children.

 

He remained loyal to the Union during the Civil War. He was elected to the state legislature again in 1861. When he took his seat, one writer observed, he delivered a strong “assertion of the loyalty of Maryland.” Governor Augustus Bradford appointed him adjutant general of Maryland in 1862, and he held the position for the next eight years. He also served as a delegate to the state’s Constitutional Convention in 1864. Although he was a slaveholder, an early biographer wrote, “he advocated, on practical grounds, the insertion of the article abolishing slavery.”

 

After the Civil War, he supported the Democratic Party. He was a prominent member of Baltimore society, and he served as president of the Board of Managers for the Methodist Episcopal Church’s Home of the Aged. He also served on the city’s public parks commission. He died in Baltimore on January 3, 1901.

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