James H. Perkins

Perkins, Rev. James Handasyd. (Boston, Massachusetts, July 31, 1810--December 14, 1849, near Cincinnati, Ohio). He was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy and at Round Hill School. Northampton, Mass. After a brief business experience in Boston he moved to Cincinnati, where he was admitted to the bar in 1837, but two years later he took up the Ministry-at-Large organized by the First Congregational Society (Unitarian) of Cincinnati, and later became pastor of the church. He was active in social reforms and as a lecturer, and was author of a number of essays descriptive of life in what was then the far west.

The hymn in 3 stanzas, C.M., beginning "It is a faith sublime and sure" attributed to "J.H. Perkins" in Longfellow and Johnson's Book of Hymns (1846-1848) is presumably by him, although it is not included with his poems printed in the Memoir and Writings of James Handasyde Perkins, edited by W.H. Channing, Cincinnati, 1851.

--Henry Wilder Foote, DNAH Archives