Reverend Edward T. Peery - Reverend John Thompson Peery
Amazing Parallels in Two Peerys, By John Edward Hicks
Kansas City Times - Thursday, June 25, 1964
The caption under a picture reads:
The Shawnee Methodist mission played a part in the lives of the two ministers
named Peery. Both were associated with it and both served as missionaries to
the Indian tribes of the area. The picture shows the north building of the
mission, which was a dormitory and school for Indian girls.
Peery avenue is a quiet thoroughfare, seldom getting into the news. When it
does occasionally appear in The Star, proof-readers are alerted to prevent
its being spelled Perry.
Between Eleventh and Twelfth, running east from Olive, it was named to honor
the memory of the Rev. Edward T. Peery, whom this writer in a recent article
in The Star confused with the Rev. John Thompson Peery.
Mrs. Wilma Peery Garvin, 5331 Forest avenue, grand-niece of the latter, has
furnished a sheaf of material to his life and times, and for good measure has
included a summary of the Rev. Edward T. Peery, whose history, she says,
often gets entangled with that of her grand-uncle. For there are amazing
parallels in their stories.
FROM SAME COUNTY
Both were born in Tazewell County, Virginia. Both came to Missouri and
became Methodist ministers. Both were associated with the Shawnee Methodist
Indian mission, became missionaries to the Delaware Indians and were
interested in the Cherokees. Both became residents of Kansas City, preached
to the same congregations here and had farms in what became the northeast
section of the city.
The Rev. Edward T. Peery was born in 1800, the son of James and Jean Francis
Peery. At the death of his parents, he and his brother Thomas were "bound
out" to learn the tanner's trade. They ran away, Edward coming west and
eventually becoming a Methodist minister.
In 1832 he became associated with the Shawnee mission, and from 1833 to 1837
was first of the Methodist missionaries to the Delaware Indians, his little
log mission then standing on the site of the present Christian church at
White Church in Wyandotte County. That church has a memorial window
dedicated to the "12 apostles to the Indians," the Rev. Edward T. Peery being
one of the 12.
In 1849 he and his wife gave up missionary work and built a home on their
farm at the southeast corner of Ninth and Harrison, on a site now occupied by
a Masonic temple. He preached in a school building at Missouri avenue and
Walnut, and contributed the lot on which the Fifth Street Methodist church
later was built between Delaware and Wyandotte, the first Protestant church
in Kansas City. He was a director in the old Union bank and an incorporator
of the Union cemetery.
The farm later was platted into town lots by Johnston Lykins, Kersey Coats
and David Hood, being called Peery place extending from Charlotte to Troost,
Ninth to Twelfth. It is not clear when he moved to a farm east of Kansas
City or its exact location, but "his name appeared high on the city's tax
list for many years," according to Dr. A. Theodore Brown in his recently
published history of Kansas City, "Frontier Community." When he died
November 28, 1864, he was buried in Union cemetery.
A NEW DEVELOPMENT
His widow in 1882 sold to Clouser and Cole for platting about 20 acres
between Ninth and Twelfth, Olive to Prospect, where Peery avenue has its
beginnings. Mr. Peery died January 26, 1890.
The Rev. John Thompson Peery was born February 18, 1817, the son of George
and Jane Campbell (Thompson) Peery. George and James Peery, father of the
Rev. Edward T. Peery, were first cousins. This and other information was
compiled by his daughter, the late Mrs. Mary Peery Whittaker of Kansas City,
from family records and his personal diary written in 1850 and 1851 when he
was a teacher at the Shawnee mission school.
The family moved to Missouri in 1835, settling near Trenton. That winter he
taught school in Clay County. In 1837 he was licensed to preach, served the
area of present Platte County. In the fall of 1843 he became a missionary
among the Delaware Indians, later serving Kickapoo and Kansas Indians and the
Cherokees at Tahlequah, Okla., then Indian Territory. In 1844 he married
Mrs. Mary Jane Chick Johnson, widow of William Johnson.
IN SEVERAL STATES
He served churches in the Kansas City area, and at various places in
Missouri, Texas and Kansas. When his wife died November 21, 1872, he sold
his farm south of the present Cliff Drive Park. It was later platted into
town lots as McKinney Heights by Marshall P. Wright.
Mrs. Virginia Harris Thornton, 4809 Holly street, who was 102 on May 28, was
born on this farm. Her grandmother, Mrs. John Calvin McCoy, had been
Virginia Chick, sister of the first wife of the Rev. John Thompson Peery.
The two ministers named Peery, leaders in the cultural growth and progress of
the city in the forenoon of its history, are now but dimly remembered, their
names preserved, and confused by the name of a quiet residential street.
Source: The Kansas City Times, Thursday, June 25, 1964. Submitted by Janis
Langwiser on Tue, Mar 18, 1997.
Editor - Peery Family
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