Death and Legacy
In 1819, after a successful expedition to Venezuela's Orinoco River to consult with Simon Bolivar about piracy in the Caribbean, Perry contracted yellow fever from mosquitoes while aboard the USS Nonsuch. Despite the crew's efforts to reach Trinidad for medical assistance, the Commodore died as the ship was nearing Port of Spain. He was 34 years old. After being buried in Port of Spain, his remains were later taken back to the United States and interred in Newport, Rhode Island. After resting briefly in the Old Common Burial Ground, his body was finally moved to Newport's Island Cemetery, where his brother Matthew C. Perry is also interred.
His family's descendants include Commander John Rodgers, the second person to become a United States naval aviator, and well known civilian aviator Calbraith Perry Rodgers, the first person to fly an airplane—the Vin Fiz—across the United States.
Oliver Hazard Perry La Farge (December 19, 1901 – August 2, 1963) was an American writer and anthropologist, best known for his 1930 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Laughing Boy.
Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont (November 12, 1858 – June 10, 1908) was an American socialite and United States Representative from New York.
Oliver Hazard Perry Throck Morton (August 4, 1823 – November 1, 1877) (no relation)—the 14th Governor of Indiana, a famous Republican politician and U.S. Senator, who was a leader among the Radical Republican reconstructionists—was named in his honor.*
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Famous quotes containing the words death and, death and/or legacy:
“For man, maximum excitement is the confrontation of death and the skillful defiance of it by watching others fed to it as he survives transfixed with rapture.”
—Ernest Becker (1924–1974)
“People named John and Mary never divorce. For better or for worse, in madness and in saneness, they seem bound together for eternity by their rudimentary nomenclature. They may loathe and despise one another, quarrel, weep, and commit mayhem, but they are not free to divorce. Tom, Dick, and Harry can go to Reno on a whim, but nothing short of death can separate John and Mary.”
—John Cheever (1912–1982)
“What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)