Toponymie | Canton de Potton | Place Names

This road is located in Vale Perkins.  Samuel Perkins was the second son of Peter Perkins II, whom Taylor notes as being “ great-great-grandson of Edward Perkins who emigrated from Ufton Court, Berks, England, and settled in New Haven, Conn., in 1629. »^[1]

Peter Perkins II was the first Perkins to settle in Potton.  Peter II, his wife Anna Ames, and two sons, Peter III and Samuel, settled on the meadowland across the river from Highwater, in the summer of 1793.  The family was forced to relocate the following spring when the waters of the Missisquoi reached the eaves of their cabin!  They moved to the higher land, just west of Mansonville.

Peter III remained in the same general area of what is now called West Hill, and “ the descendants of his three sons, Captain David, Lyman and Lewis, settled in and about Mansonville.  All are now dead or have moved away, except Major Frank H. Perkins, son of the late Levi Perkins and grandson of Captain David, and his son Frederick and daughter Gertrude, wife of William Cyrus Perkins of Vale Perkins.

About 1793, Samuel Perkins, the other son of Peter II, hearing that Nicholas Austin had left the camp that he had built on the shore of Memphremagog Lake somewhere about 1785 and had taken his family to his property at Austin's Bay, cut a trail through the woods from where Mansonville now stands to Vale Perkins, taking up the land vacated by Austin at Perkins wharf.  Here he and his three sons, Cyrus, John and Ebenezer, lived and died. »^[2]

At this point, it is interesting to quote William Cyrus Perkins: “ My great-grandfather in coming here blazed the first trail from Mansonville and the government road now being built is located upon it.^[3] » 

Taylor states “ The family of John (Perkins) moved away; Ebenezer (married, but) had no children; and the land generally came down through Captain Cyrus to his son David G., who lived the larger part of his long life of 92 years on the old farm, which passed at his death to his only son, William Cyrus Perkins, who now resides there. »^[4]  William Cyrus Perkins (1863-1940) was father to David F. M. Perkins (1915-2001), who lived and died on the original Perkins land as well.

Samuel Perkins married Levina Edson, who died in 1855 at age 90.

He died in 1845 and is buried in the Jones Cemetery in Vale Perkins.  His son Cyrus died in 1868 and is buried beside his wife Sally, who died in 1870.  Another son, Ebenezer, died in 1889 at nearly 93 years of age.  His  wife Laura died in 1857.  Their graves are side by side in the Jones Cemetery in Vale Perkins. 

Samuel Perkins and his descendants once owned a great deal of land to the south of Vale Perkins, from the lakeshore south and west, all now parcelled out to various individuals.  Alan Perkins, great-great-great grandson of Samuel Perkins, is the last to live in Vale Perkins on family land.  Others of the family still own property here, but are not residents on a year-round basis.