Ira Perley (1799 - 1874)
Born at Boxford (MA); died at Concord (NH).
Lawyer, jurist.
Portrait by Alfred E. Smith, 1899, after photograph.
Presented to the State in 1900.

Ira Perley's father died when the boy was seven years old, and he was raised by his mother who encouraged his reading and studying. At age sixteen Perley went to the academy at Bradford (MA); he graduated from Dartmouth College in 1822.

Dartmouth College asked Perley to become a tutor a year after his graduation; Perley held the position 1823/5. At the same time Perley began to read law, first with Benjamin J. Gilbert at Hanover, then with Daniel M. Christie, at Dover (NH). He was admitted to the New Hampshire Bar in 1827, while also serving as Treasurer for Dartmouth College.

Perley practiced law for nine years at Hanover (1827/36), and he became well known in Grafton County courts. Then Perley moved to the wider world of Concord (NH), where he also developed a reputation as a lawyer. Perley was appointed Associate Justice in the New Hampshire Superior Court (today's Supreme Court) in 1850; he resigned in 1852.

The state's courts were reorganized in 1855, and Perley became Chief Justice of the state's highest court. [In 1855 the revised Court was named the Supreme Judicial Court.] He resigned as Chief Justice in 1859, but was reappointed to the same post in 1864. He served as Chief Justice this time 1864/69, when he was seventy years of age.

Perley retained scholarship even after leaving office. Charles H. Bell, writing in The Bench and Bar of New Hampshire (1894), says (op cit., p. 107):

I fear that few...professional men make any pretense of keeping up in after life their acquaintance with the studies which they pursued with much expenditure of time, and which so rapidly slip from the loosened hold. But Judge Perley...maintained his familiarity with the ancient classics in the originals. He read Cicero and Horace much; and the French and Italian authors in their own tongues. Shakespeare, Milton, and the best English writers were familiar to him, and he kept up with all desirable contemporary literature with a scholarly interest.

Reference: Charles H. Bell, The Bench and Bar of New Hampshire (1894), pp. 105 - 108.