Lewis Perry was born in Williamstown, Massachusetts on January 3, 1877, to Arthur Latham Perry, a prominent economist, and Mary Brown Perry.[1] He attended Lawrenceville School as well as Phillips Academy for one year,[2] then Williams College, where he graduated in 1898. In Williams, he was the national president of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity, of which his father helped found the Williams branch.[3] He was also the first student to be awarded the Rogerson Cup award, the "highest award for alumni service" at Williams.[4] He then attended Princeton University, where he earned an M.A. and a L.H.D degree. From 1901 to 1914, he taught English at Williams. In 1914, he became principal of Exeter. It was under Perry in 1919 that the Exeter Summer program was created.[5] It was also under him that philanthropist Edward Harkness donated to the school $5.8 million to create the Harkness table teaching method in 1930.[6] He retired in 1946.
Perry first married Margaret Hubbell (1881-1928), with whom he had a daughter and a son. He later married Hubbell's sister, Juliette Adams, whose two daughters from her first marriage, Juliette and Margaret, became his stepdaughters. He died on January 27, 1970, in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania[8] and is buried in the Williams College Cemetery in Williamstown, Massachusetts.[9]
See also his brother Bliss Perry, who was a noted professor of literature at Harvard.
