{History of Mapleton} Edward Harvey Perry (1871-1936)

This is from The History of Mapleton, by Ralph K. Harmer and Wendell B. Johnson, on page 164.

Edward Harvey Perry was the son of Stephen Chadwick and Mary Boggs Perry. He was born in Springville, Utah, on April 9, 1871. He attended school in Springville, but apparently did not advance beyond the sixth grade. At seventeen, he became the head of the family because of the death of his father. Since the older children were all married, Harvey went to work in the Tintic mines and as a section crew worker on the railroad to earn money for the family. He also worked as a bridge builder and served as road supervisor during the construction of the road from Springville to Spanish Fork Canyon. As a young man he enjoyed sports, especially baseball.

When Stephen C. Perry died, the farm was divided into eight acre plots, and each child was apportioned a plot on which to build a home. Harvey began construction on his home shortly after February 19, 1896, when he married Mary Ann Fullmer in the Salt Lake Temple.

Mary Ann Fullmer was a daughter of William Price Fullmer, and Maria Jane Curtis Fullmer. She was born in a one-room log cabin in Mapleton on April 10, 1878. Coming from a poor family, she and her sisters had to take turns going to school because her parents could not afford shoes for all the children. She was raised in a religious atmosphere and was imbued early with the ideals of honesty, prayer, work and industry.

To this union were born the following children: Hildred, Christa, Harvey Edward, Amy, Dora, Zelma and William Stephen. All were born in Mapleton. As the family increased in size, Harvey built a new, larger home. Influenced by a scheming builder, the home was beyond Harvey’s financial capacity and he had to seek employment away from home. He worked as a station engineer in the Stoors Canyon power plant, peddled fruit at the mining camps of Clear Creek, Schofield and Winter Quarters, and then turned to a hay baling venture with his brother, Hyrum. All to no avail. After further failures with a brick yard and a timber contract with a coal mine, he ended up selling the home to rid himself of the debt.

Harvey moved on to Darlington, Idaho to homestead. But this venture also failed. Again he attempted farming for the Utah Construction Company which had land interests in Utah and Idaho. It lasted no longer than a couple of years. During that period, his wife Mary Ann and the children consented to follow him to Idaho. Further complications in an already strained marital relationship reached a point beyond reconciliation, however, and after what seemed imminent failure, she took the children back to Utah.

Harvey was described as being “honest, almost to a fault,” hardworking, and capable of seeing only the good in others. He was religious in his own way, and attended church often, but was self-conscious to the degree that he would sit on the back row to avoid being called upon to pray. His children fondly remember his kindness.

On his last job in Blackfoot, Idaho, Harvey became sick. It grew more serious, developed into pneumonia, and caused his death on October 29, 1936.