Mary Alice Perry (Rice)

Mary Alice Rice (always known as Alice) was born November 7, 1848, the youngest of the five children of Abel Rice and Mary Howe Bigelow. Both families had lived for generations in or near Marlboro where Alice was born. She spent a disastrous year teaching school before marrying a young Universalist minister, George William Perry, on July 7, 1866. Universalist minister, George William Perry, on July 7, 1866. Though the years, George was to serve parishes in Lynn, Lawrence and Springfield, Massachusetts, as well as Auburn, Maine, and Rutland, Vermont. They had six children, the eldest, Lulu, was my maternal grandmother.

The Perrys started a camp for the boys of his Rutland church because, being Universalists, they were not considered Christian, and were therefore barred from the Rutland YMCA. One hundred seventeen years later, Eagle Camp is still going strong as a family camp in South Hero, Vermont. Alice cleaned, cook, patched, nursed, making arrangements for the incorporation of the camp to preserve it posterity.

The desscendants of George and Alice have remained very close and a large amount of historical material has been preserved both at Eagle Camp and in private hands. Gerorge was an amateur photographer, and I have many of his pictures, postcards and glass-plate

negatives. Lulu wrote to her mother weekly and those letters from 1888 to 1903 have been and printed. The orginals are at the Schlesinger Library of Harvard University.

http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~sch00152