Perkins (Thomas Handasyd) is born in Boston.

The son of a merchant who dies soon after his birth, Thomas Handasyd Perkins foregoes attending Harvard to go to work, initially in a counting house, then, with his brothers and two friends, forms a business that is involved in the slave trade in Haiti (then Saint-Domingue) in 1786. Returning to Boston, Perkins marries Sarah Elliot in 1788, becomes involved in the China Trade in 1789,* and starts his own company in 1792.* He lives at 17 Pearl Street. Through trade and then investments in textiles, railroads, and mining, Perkins amasses a fortune equivalent to more than $1 billion today. A colonel in the state militia, Perkins serves in the Massachusetts Senate, as a delegate to the Hartford Convention, and becomes one of Boston’s leading philanthropists. He dies in Boston on January 11, 1854.*