| | Abstract: | Joseph and Jacob Perkins were sons of Simon Perkins, general land agent in the Western Reserve. They came from Warren, Ohio, to Cleveland in the 1850s to engage in banking, railroad building, real estate and various businesses. Together they organized and operated the Cleveland & Mahoning Railroad. Joseph was president of the Bank of Commerce (1852-1872), a leading benefactor of Cleveland charities, the first president of Cleveland City Hospital, and a trustee for Western Reserve College (1846-1885). Jacob, also a businessman and president of the Cleveland & Mahoning Railroad, was a prominent Ohio politician as well, serving as a member of the Ohio Constitutional Convention in 1850. His son, Jacob Bishop Perkins, was a large real estate owner and builder in Cleveland. Joseph Perkins' papers include business correspondence, building construction contracts, land, tenement, and office leases, financial statements and business records, maps and surveys, cancelled land contracts and cancelled checks. Jacob Perkins' papers include voluminous correspondence, and accounts and receipts of business affairs. Jacob Bishop Perkins' papers include correspondence, legal papers, contracts, deeds, leases, maps, and surveys, all pertaining primarily to his affairs as a real estate owner and builder in Cleveland. Other family papers include school books, letter books, estate papers, genealogical information, a scrapbook on the early settlement of the Western Reserve, business papers of Joseph's son Douglas and a Civil War diary by another son Charles. Also included are photographs, diaries, trip journals, correspondence from Simon and Nancy Perkins, financial journals, ledgers and account books of Stephen E. Brooks, as well as material relating to the Cleveland, Warren & Pittsburgh Railroad, the Chicago, Danville & Vincennes Railroad, the Cleveland Female Seminary, the Cleveland Board of Park Commissioners, the Hill Clutch Company and the Walker Manufacturing Company. | |
