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from Past and Present of Mahaska County, Iowa by Manoah Hedge The S. J. Clarke Publishing Co. 1906
Edwin Perry, secretary of district No. 13, United Mine Workers of America and also president of the board of education in Oskaloosa, t o which position he was elected by the largest vote ever given to a candidate for the office, is a native son of Wales. He was born on the 17th of November, 1854, his parents being Robert and Elizabeth (Roberts) Perry, the former a native of England and the latter of Wales. The father was a coal miner and died in 1860, at the age of thirty-two years. The mother came to the United States with her three children in 1869 and her death occurred in Pennsylvania in 1875, when she was forty- two years of age. Both Mr. and Mrs. Perry were members of the Welsh Presbyterian church. Of their children George and Mary are both deceased, leaving Edwin Perry the only surviving representative of that marriage. After the death of her first husband Mrs. Perry married again, becoming the wife of John Hughes, a coal miner, and unto them were born seven children: Ed T., Jesse, Mary E., Robert, Llewellyn W., one who died in infancy and Sarah. In early boyhood Edwin Perry attended the common schools of the little rock-ribbed country in which he was born, but when only ten years of age he went into the coal mines of Wales and in 1869 he came to the United States with his mother, settling in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, where he entered the anthracite mines, being thus employed for seven years. In 1869 he came to Oskaloosa and for some time his principal occupation was coal mining. He was, however, for five years in the employ of the Oskaloosa Gas and Electric Light Company as foreman of the plant and secretary and superintendent of the company. He then returned to the mines and was identified with the work until 1902, when he became an officer of district No. 13, United Mine Workers of America. He was chosen vice-president of the organization and in the fall of the same year was elected president, while at this writing he is secretary and treasurer, having filled the last named position since April i, 1904. In 1877 Mr. Perry was married to Miss Anna A. Rouse, who was born in Allegheny county, Pennsylvania, in 1861, and was a daughter of George and Mary Ann (Casey) Rouse, the father a brick mason by trade. Mr. and Mrs. Perry have become the parents of seven children: Nellie, now the wife of Jay Minard, a farmer living near New Sharon, Iowa ;Jessie R., the wife of Albert Meadows, a coal operator at Ottumwa, Iowa; Wilfred H. and Edwin, both deceased; Ethel, employed by the Home Telephone Company in Oskaloosa; Lyle, a student in school; and Gwendolyn. Mrs. Perry belongs to the church of the Latter Day Saints. Mr. Perry is identified with the Knights of Pythias and the Foresters of America. In politics he is a republican and is influential and active in the local ranks of the party. He has been clerk of Oskaloosa township and has served on the Oskaloosa school board for three years, acting as president of the board during the last year. He had the distinction of receiving the largest vote ever cast for a candidate for a city office in Oskaloosa, for out of about fourteen hundred votes he received twelve hundred, a fact which indicates his personal popularity as well as the confidence displayed in his powers to work effectively and earnestly for the school interests of the city.
Past and Present of Mahaska County, Iowa
Mahaska County, Iowa Genealogy