Thomas Nelson Perkins (1870-1937)
of Boston, Massachusetts; Lawyer & Assistant to the U.S. Secretary of War
He was born in Milton, Massachusetts, and graduated from Harvard (1891) and Harvard Law School (1894) before spending a further year studying abroad. He became a senior partner in the noted Boston law firm of Ropes, Gray, Boyden & Perkins. He was a director of the Boston & Maine Railroad; Merrimac Chemical Company; American Telephone & Telegraph Company; Stone & Webster, Inc.; Old Colony Trust Company; Southern Pacific Company; First National Bank of Boston, etc. During World War I, he was appointed assistant to the Secretary of War and Chief Counsel and a member of the Priorities Commission of the War Industries Board. Following the war, he was a member of the Paris Peace Conference and the Allied Reparations Committee. He had been made a Fellow of Harvard College in 1905, and received Harvard's honorary degree of LL.D. In 1941, the "Thomas Nelson Perkins Room" in Massachusetts Hall, Harvard (given to the use of the President and Fellows of Harvard College) was dedicated to his memory. In 1900, he married to Louisa, daughter of Col. Charles Francis Adams, President of the Union Pacific Railroad, and they were the parents of three sons (listed).
