The Perry/Gumbleton Line

Your Grandfather: Francis Swift Perry (1923–2011)

Francis Swift Perry was born in 1923. His middle name, Swift, connects him to one of the oldest Cape Cod ↗families in your ancestry. He served in World War II with the 70th Reconnaissance Troop of the United States Army. After the war, he married Eleanor “Babs” Wall, and they remained married for 64 years.

Francis and Babs raised four children: Bruce A. Perry, Gail Perry (who married Robert King), Carol A. Perry (your mother, who married John Patrick Long), and Sandra H. Perry. Francis had one sister, the late Mary Elizabeth Lualdi.

Francis died suddenly on June 5, 2011, at age 87, at his home in South Yarmouth, Massachusetts. He was buried with full military honors at the Massachusetts National Cemetery in Bourne.

His middle name is worth pausing on. The Swift family of Cape Cod is one of the deepest lines in your ancestry, reaching back to the 1600s and connecting to multiple colonial families. That Francis carried the Swift name as his own tells you how important that line was to the Perry family. It still is.