Katie Perkins was born in 1875 in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, a small factory city of traditional New Englanders and immigrants from Europe. Her parents were George Henry Perkins of Rhode Island and Margaret Rennie Crawford, an immigrant from Glasgow, Scotland. Katie had three siblings, half-brother George, brother William, and sister Hattie. Katie lived her entire life in Pawtucket, sometimes living with her parents, her widowed mother, and late in life by herself. She was educated at Pawtucket High School, and worked in various jobs as a bookkeeper, brush-maker, and house-cleaner. She died alone in 1937.

Infant Katie

Katie’s heritage on her father’s side was the Perkins, who immigrated from England in the 1600s. Her grandfather was John Prosser Perkins, a farmer, married to Huldah Tyler. John Prosser and Huldah had five children: Hannah Mahala, born 1827, Charles C., born 1838, George Henry, born 1833, John Riley, born 1834, and Palmer Gersham, born 1834. Their youngest son, Palmer, was thirty, married with a child, when he was killed at Cold Harbor in Virginia, during which thousands of Union and Confederate troops died.

George Henry Perkins, born November 9, 1833, departed during the 1850s from the small farming town of Exeter, where he grew up and where his parents and siblings would live out their lives; George moved northeast to Pawtucket, where there were more opportunities for a person engaging in industrial work. George married Mary Ann Tourgee of North Kingston, a town east of Exeter, on July 3, 1854. The Tourgee’s were descendants of French Huguenots. He was twenty-one and she was seventeen. In the 1860 census for North Providence/Pawtucket, George and Mary Ann lived as tenants with a family; George was a mill operative, that is, he worked in a spinning mill. Husband and wife had a personal estate of $200. The couple had a child, George Francis, in 1862. Unfortunately, Mary Ann died three years later on May 13, 1865. George remarried a Scottish immigrant, Margaret Rennie Crawford, nineteen months later, on December 27, 1866. He was thirty-three and she was twenty-five. By 1870, George and Margaret Rennie had thrived sufficiently that they owned their own home in Pawtucket. Besides George Francis, George had another child with Margaret, William Lennox, born July 12, 1868. George was no longer a mill worker, rather a peddler. In 1880, the family lived at 24 Woodbine St. in Pawtucket. (Apartment complexes now occupy the spot where they lived.) By this time, they had two more children, Katie, age five, and Hattie, age one. In time George gave up his occupation as a peddler. In 1900 he was an overseer at a cotton mill, living on Central Avenue (in a dwelling that no longer exists).

Margaret Rennie Crawford had immigrated to America from Glasgow, Scotland, along with her parents Hugh and Margaret Crawford on April 9, 1853, arriving at Pawtucket. Hugh Crawford was born in Glasgow on January 31, 1789; he died in Pawtucket, Rhode Island on July 1, 1857 when he was 68. He was the second-born son to John Crawford and Agnes Wright of Glasgow. He had many siblings, though most died in childhood. His mother died in childbirth in 1809 when Hugh was twenty. His father died at age of 86 in 1853.

Katie as a young woman

Hugh married Janet Rowan at Canongate, Edinburgh, Midlothian Scotland on April 4, 1809. Janet was twenty-one and Hugh was twenty. Their firstborn son was John in 1811, followed by Hugh, Jr., in 1814, George Hugh in 1816, Janet in 1818, and Agnes in 1819. Wife Janet died in 1839, and Hugh remarried Margaret Lennox on August 19, 1840 in Glasgow. She was thirty-five and he was fifty-one. They had two children, daughter Margaret Rennie, born Oct. 9, 1841, and son William, born in 1845.

The 1851 Scotland Census listed Hugh as a paper stainer who lived at 55 High St. in St. Paul parish in Glasgow. He was erroneously listed as sixty-seven years old (actually sixty-two). His wife Margaret was forty-three, daughter Margaret Rennie was nine, and son William was six. A paper stainer was an old and honorable profession in the British Isles, typically involving the staining of wall hangings such as wallpaper, sometimes engravings. Hugh’s son Hugh Jr. had been trained in this craft as well, as seen in a letter written from son to father in September, 1852.

Hugh Jr. had sailed for America in 1843, arriving at New York on August 13. He migrated to Providence, Rhode Island, and established himself in business as a paper box manufacturer. His wife Catharine Blair Crawford followed eight years later, arriving at New York on the vessel Statira Morse on Sept 15, 1851, from Glasgow. Accompanying her was their daughter, Janet, age sixteen.

Hugh Jr. became a citizen Sept. 1852, which perhaps inspired him, joined by Catherine, in writing a letter of invitation to America to his father, on Sept. 27. Hugh Sr. was sufficiently impressed by the prospect of America to emigrate with his family, arriving at Pawtucket on April 9, 1853.

Hugh died in 1857. His widow Margaret worked to raise her children Margaret Rennie and William during the rough times of the Civil War. William served with the Union troops for four years. In 1860 Margaret was eighteen years old and was like her half-brother Hugh a box maker. William was sixteen and also employed. The mother and widow Margaret was a wash woman. Margaret, who went by “Maggie,” outlived Hugh by 18 years, dying May 3, 1875. Before she died she lived with her daughter Margaret Rennie and son-in-law George at their home in Pawtucket. Hugh and Margaret are buried next to Hugh Crawford Jr and Catherine Blair Crawford at Mineral Spring Cemetery in Pawtucket.

George and Margaret in 1880 had a growing family. Son George was seventeen; he worked as a clerk in a Pawtucket store. William was eleven, Katie was five, and Hattie was one. A niece of George and Margaret, Hannah Caroline Perkins, daughter of John Riley and Susan Perkins, lived with them at this time. She was seventeen, and worked in a woolen mill. Twenty years later, George and Margaret lived at 439 Central Ave. in Pawtucket. They had quite an extended family living them. George was sixty-seven and Margaret was fifty-eight. Son William Lennox was thirty-one, and lived at home after the tragic death of his first wife, Harriet L. Johnson, who had passed away three years earlier in 1897. Will and his unmarried sister Katie, twenty-five, worked as bookkeepers. Daughter Hattie, twenty-one, was by this time married to Samuel Brown, age twenty-five. He was listed by the census taker in 1900 as a chemist. Their daughter Florence Beatrice was an infant, born in 1899. Samuel, Hattie, and Florence lived with George and Margaret at the house. Charles and Margaret also had a family living as borders with them: a husband, wife, and young daughter. All in all ten people lived at this home on Central Ave.

Brown/Perkins Family: Katie is on the lower left; her nephews Will and Henry are next to her; next to them is Margaret Rennie; her granddaughter Florence is next to her; above Florence is Hattie; next to her is Will, and next to him is his second wife Lizzie; next to Lizzie is Samuel Brown

Katie, who was single her whole life, was surrounded by family. Living nearby were many of the Perkins’s. About 25 miles away, in Exeter, Rhode Island, Katie’s aunt Hannah Mahala Perkins Reynolds lived until her death in 1911. Her husband Almon Perkins had died in 1899. Her son Whitman Greene Perkins continued to live in Exeter. Katie’s uncle John Riley Perkins died in 1912 in Exeter, Rhode Island. He was married to Susan and had children David G. Perkins and John Palmer Perkins. They all lived and died in Exeter. In 1900 Katie lived with George and Margaret Perkins as well as her siblings William, Hattie, and Hattie’s husband and daughter. After George’s death Katie and Margaret continued living at the home on Central Ave. They took in a boarder as well. In 1900, Katie was a bookkeeper; in 1910, she was a brush maker; in 1920, she did not work. Perhaps she was taking care of her mother, who was dying. At this time, she and her mother lived with Samuel, Hattie, and Florence. After her mother’s death in 1921, one assumes that Katie lived with Samuel and Hattie until Samuel’s death in 1928, when Hattie moved in with Earl and Florence Phillips. In the 1930 federal census, she was listed as a servant working for a private family; she lived alone at 33 Clark Ave, an apartment in a tenement house, in Pawtucket. In the 1935 Rhode Island census, she listed her occupation as a housekeeper. Katie died October 3, 1937; she was buried at Oak Grove Cemetery.

Katie Perkins

For more on Katie and her family, see The Memories of Katie Perkins, which can be purchased through Amazon at: The Memories of Katie Perkins: The Story of the Perkins and Related Families of New England: Lawson, Russell M.: 9798860176744: Amazon.com: Books