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Death
of Former Member, J. A. Perkins 20
July 1954 The Braidwood Review and District Advocate |
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Mr. John Arthur Perkins, a former
member for Eden-Monaro in the Federal Parliament and a Minister in the Lyons
and Menzies Government, died at his home in Manly on Tuesday morning, at the
age of 76 years. Mr. Perkins was given a State funeral
on Thursday. After a service in the Methodist Church,
Manly, the cortege left for the Northern Suburbs Crematorium. The late Mr. Perkins was born at
Tumut, and received his education at Cooma, becoming a mixed farmer, and later a newsagent at the town. He was Mayor of Cooma in 1904 and
1908, and a member of the Local Land Board at Cooma for 14 years. He was a past Grand Master and a member of the Board of Directors of the
M.U.I.O.O.F. (N.S.W.). Mr. Perkins entered the N.S.W. Legislative Assembly in
1921 as member for Goulburn. He resigned in 1926 to successfully contest
the Eden-Monaro seat in the House of Representatives at a by-election caused
by the death of Sir Austin Chapman. During his years of Parliamentary service,
he held the Ministerial officers of Government Whip, Assistant Minister for
Trade and Customs, Minister for the Interior, Minister for Trade and Customs,
and Minister for External Affairs. He lost the Eden-Monaro seat at the
1929 elections, when the Scullin Labour Government replaced the Bruce-Page
administration, but won again in 1931and remained in the seat until 1943 when
he was defeated by the Labor
candidate, Mr. Allan Fraser. With this defeat Mr. Perkins retired
from politics. He is survived by his widow. The late John Arthur Perkins was
accepted as a good member by the community in his electorate, and one vitally
interested in the welfare of his electorate and constituents. |
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The
Perkin’s Papers http://www.sag.org.au/events/28-help/basics-on/92-basics-on-perkins-papers.html Discovery
and donation of the papers When Evelyn Perkins moved from Manly
to Strathfield in 1960 the research papers her husband had intended to donate
to the ‘Historical Society' (Perkins does not specify which one) were
disposed of at the local rubbish tip where an alert visitor found them packed
in a suitcase and rescued them. The original typescripts were donated
to the Mitchell Library soon afterwards while the duplicate carbon copies
were donated to SAG. They were transferred from SAG's
newspaper cuttings collection to our Primary Records collection in November
1990 together with a miscellaneous collection of unrelated scrapbooks. When Perkins moved to Sydney in 1943
he began to collate information from material available in the Mitchell
Library. He cited his sources as accurately as
possible and listed them at the head of the page so most of them can be
located and checked by today's researcher. When a source is not specific he was
as accurate as he could be under the circumstances. He had no call number,
for instance, for one particularly useful scrapbook in the Mitchell Library. Perkins called this source Book
of Cuttings in the Mitchell Library. In the later volumes when he was using
newspaper almost exclusively he grouped all the references from the one
source together. One work page has survived to show his
methodology. After listing his two main sources for Governor Bourke's trip to
Twofold Bay in 1835 he typed a note reminding himself
to check other papers for an account of the trip. Perkins cast his net rather widely in
his early volumes and included information for areas south of Goulburn, the
South Coast and the Upper Murray River. This covered his seat of Eden-Monaro.
In doing so he placed his Monaro and Tumut/Adelong material in its
appropriate context as part of an expanding frontier followed by a period of
consolidation. Once some form of settlement had
occurred the sources provided names for these new localities and Perkins was
able to focus more on his area of interest. Towards the end of his research
Perkins focused on the local newspaper as a source of information and failed
to consult neighbouring papers The Society of Australian Genealogists was established in 1932 and is
the oldest family history society in Australia. |