An Ignoble Fall: Wilbert W. Perry

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     He became one of the saddest things of all: a cautionary tale. 

     “He inherited sterling qualities from his parents,” his uncle Sylvester Barbour wrote. He was a “wonderfully interesting talker and a charming companion,” a writer for the Hartford Courant said. 

     Wilbert Warren Perry was sociable, likable – and brilliant, too. He spent his boyhood in Collinsville, Connecticut where his father was an inspector at the Collins Company, a major manufacturer of axes. At 16, he came to Hartford to attend a year of high school in preparation for college. He did so well that he graduated at the top of his class in 1867. He graduated as valedictorian of the Yale Class of 1871 just short of his twentieth birthday. While at Yale, he’d won prizes in seemingly every competition he entered. He was said to have been the sharpest mind Yale produced in 25 years.

     After a time teaching at a boys’ preparatory school in Morrisville, New Jersey, he entered Columbia Law School. He was admitted to the bar in New Haven, but moved to Hartford for his career, where the district attorney took him under his wing. He served as assistant state attorney for four years before going into private practice. In 1882 the governor appointed him to a judicial reform commission. In November he was elected to the Connecticut House of Representatives.


     His early academic achievements stood out even in a family of prominence and achievement. Some of the role models in his family included:


  • A great-uncle, Rev. Heman Humphrey, who was president of Amherst College. 

  • Uncle Henry Stiles Barbour studied law at Yale and became an attorney. He was elected a probate judge and town clerk and town treasurer in Torrington. He was also elected to the Connecticut House of Representatives and Senate. 

  •  Uncle Sylvester was a longtime attorney and judge. 

  • Uncle Heman Humphrey Barbour moved to Indianapolis at age 20 to study law and ended up serving in the Indiana State Senate. He returned to Hartford to practice law, and was elected judge of probate court. 

  • Sister Esther C. Perry graduated from the Connecticut State Normal School and after several years teaching became principal of a school in Hartford. She led the school for 20 years at a time when this was very rare for women. 


     But alcoholism took everything away from Wilbert. “The young man missed his chance, and his career has been a continual disappointment to his acquaintances and a deep grief to his friends, who knew his remarkable abilities,” a Hartford Courant reporter wrote. The headlines at his death at age 43 were painful:

     “An Ignoble Fall of a Brilliant Man.” 

     “A Sad Record - Another Bright Intellect Ruined for Liquor.”

    

 It was a bitterly cold night early in February 1895 when Wilbert “wandered around town visiting low drinking saloons until he had lost all self-control,” the Kansas City Gazette reported. “A successful lawyer. A representative…in the State Assembly…an Assistant State Attorney, a member of the Commission on Revising the Judicial System and Criminal Code of Connecticut — at last, a common drunkard, found on a vacant street lot on one of last week’s bitterly cold nights…” said the Indiana Times of Indiana, Pennsylvania. 

     A common drunkard.

His feet and hands were severely frostbitten. He was taken to the hospital, where doctors pronounced his case hopeless, due to “his system being so shattered by long, continued dissipation…” 

     Interestingly, the Connecticut newspapers did not mention the drunkenness, and reported his death as due to “frostbite and exhaustion.” His uncle Sylvester Barbour, in a profile of his nephew published 14 years after Wilbert’s death, did not even mention that he had died. Wilbert left three children, ages 14, 12 and 10. 


52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge Story No. 3 - An Ignoble Fall: Wilbert Warren Perry   

Wilbert Warren Perry (1851-1895) Valedictorian of Yale, Class of 1871; Assistant State Attorney for State of Connecticut; Connecticut State Legislator


Where He Connects In My Tree: This is a “way back” collateral relative. We are both descendants of John Barber (1719-1797) and Lydia Reed (1726-1806). John and Lydia were my fourth great-grandmother’s grandparents. (My "4-g" was Elizabeth “Betsey” Barber.) John and Lydia were Wilbert’s great-great grandparents. Read "The Principal Who Wasn't a Man" for a story about Wilbert's sister.


Sources:


     “W.W. Perry Dead. Valedictorian of the Yale Class of 1871,” Hartford Courant, 13 Feb 1895, p. 6.

     Resigned position: Hartford Courant, 22 April 1881, p. 1.

     “The Proposed Legal Reforms,” Morning Journal-Courier (New Haven, Connecticut),  May 1882, p.1.

     “Democratic Nominations for City and Council Officers, Hartford Courant, 14 April 1882, p. 3.

     “The Democratic Vigilance Committee,” Hartford Courant, 2 Oct 1882, p. 2.

     “The Inwardness of a Quarrel,” Hartford Courant, 2 May 1883, p. 2.

     “An Ignoble Fall of a Brilliant Man,” Kansas City Gazette, 21 Feb 1895, p. 6.

     “A Sad Record: Another Bright Intellect Ruined for Liquor,” The Indiana Times (Indiana, Pennsylvania), 6 March 1895, p. 4.


     Barbour, Sylvester. Reminiscences: Fifty Years a Lawyer, Hartford, Connecticut: Hartford Press, 1908. https://www.cga.ct.gov/hco/books/Reminiscences.pdf

     “Judge and Attorney Biographies,” Connecticut State Libraries, https://libguides.ctstatelibrary.org/law/judge-attorney-biographies/home

Somma, Ann Marie. “World-Renowned Maker of Axes: The Collins Company of Canton,” Connecticut History.Org, 28 April 2022. 


Copyright Andrea Auclair © 2023

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