Anne Morrison Perley

Anne Morrison Perley, 1865-1932
A Teacher in Puerto Rico

Cremains buried in her parents’ plot in Porter Cemetery, Block 54, Lot E

(Picture postcard, vintage1907, from Pinterest)

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Anne Morrison Perley was born January 28, 1865, in Henry County, Illinois, to Peleg Stone Perley and Nancy Eliza Morrison. Anne had three siblings: Bruce, Grace and Harriet (known as Polly).  

Anne came from a family of teachers. Her grandfather, Nathanial Perley, had been an educator for over 30 years, and her father Peleg was a teacher prior to becoming a lawyer and practicing law in Henry, Illinois.

Peleg Perley was the postmaster of Henry, Illinois, in the early 1880s. In 1883, he employed Anne as a postal clerk. She was attending Washington University’s College of Fine Arts in St. Louis in 1887.

The Perley family moved to Arizona where Peleg continued his legal career in a milder climate. Anne traveled to Tombstone to fill the position of assistant principal at Tombstone High School in January, 1892. It was a temporary appointment, and she returned to Phoenix at the end of the school year in June. Having acquired some administrative experience, she was then hired as the assistant principal for the old Central School at 201 North Central Avenue in Phoenix. 

Anne remained in Phoenix, teaching, until after the death of her parents—her father in 1898 and her mother in 1900. Thereafter, she went to teach in Bisbee, returning to Phoenix in 1903. A few years later, Anne departed Arizona for New York and accepted an offer to teach in Puerto Rico. She arrived there in September 1909 aboard the Steamship Coamo. The 1910 federal census recorded her as a schoolteacher living in Pueblo Norte, Aibonito. 

Anne may have learned to speak Spanish during her years of teaching in Tombstone, Bisbee and Phoenix. Acquired by the United States from Spain in 1898, Puerto Rico had a need for bilingual teachers, especially after the Foraker Act of 1901 mandated that English should be the language of instruction in Puerto Rican high schools. It is not known how long Anne remained in Puerto Rico teaching. However, by 1920 she was back in Brooklyn, New York, and working as a translator for an export business. Presumably, she was by then fluent in Spanish. 

Anne was still living in Brooklyn in 1930 when she fell ill and was sent to a private sanitarium in Stamford, Connecticut. She died there on May 23, 1932. Her sister Grace arranged for her cremains to be returned to Arizona where she was buried in her parents’ cemetery plot in Porter Cemetery.

© 2019 by Patricia Gault. Last revised 15 March 2019.

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