Sarah Maria Clinton Perkins ( Clinton; pen name S. M. Perkins and S. M. C. Perkins; April 23, 1824 – December 2, 1905) was an American Universalist minister, social reformer, lecturer, editor, and author of Sunday school books. Early in life, she was engaged in educational work. She was involved in the temperance movement and advocated for women's suffrage. She was an early abolitionist and an early Prohibitionist. Perkins was a highly educated woman, a writer and speaker of rare force. Moving to Cleveland, Ohio, after being widowed in 1880, she was for many years actively connected as National Lecturer with the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). She filled various other positions in reform associations including, President of Cleveland's Equal Franchise Club, and president of the Literary Guild of Cleveland.
Early life and education
Sarah Maria Clinton was born in Otsego, New York, near Cooperstown, April 23, 1824. She was the seventh of a family of nine children, and one of six daughters. Her parents were Joel and Mary Clinton. On her father's side, she was connected with DeWitt Clinton, who was a cousin of her grandfather. On her mother's side, she was descended from the Mathewson family, well known in the early history of Rhode Island and Connecticut. Her mother was the daughter of a Puritan of the strictest type, and trained her daughter according to the old-fashioned rules which came over in the Mayflower.
When Perkins was ten, her father died, leaving no property. The mother struggled hard to support the family. She first trained her children to cherish a faith in God, and in the triumph of good over evil. She set them examples of industry and economy, by carrying her burdens cheerfully, and denying herself first.
Perkins early showed a fondness for books and for study, and eagerly read everything at her disposal. At a very early age Sarah exhibited a natural love for out of door sports, and at the same time developed a great fondness for books and study, and was always an apt scholar. She remembers a prize of one dollar awarded to her by "spelling down" the entire school even though she was one of the youngest pupils. She learned the multiplication table by cutting it out of an old book and pinning it to the head of her bedstand, and studying it early in the morning, when she first awoke.
Perkins continued to study for the purpose of becoming a teacher, thinking at that time that a district school teacher stood upon almost the highest pinnacle that any woman could, with propriety, attempt to reach. She said to one of her close teacher friends one day, when despondant,— "It is all a mistake that God made me a girl, for if I were a man I could and would preach."
At fifteen, she became a member of the church and a Sunday-school teacher.
Career
New England
Picking up bits of knowledge in the intervals of work, she progressed well with her education. At eighteen, in Otsego, at Hope Mills, in her own district, she began her work as a school teacher. With the money she earned, she started for the academy in Adams, Massachusetts and she continued, in this piece meal way, teaching summers and attending school in the winters, until she acquired a fine education. She was a successful teacher in Savoy, Massachusetts and Cheshire, Massachusetts, where she had pupils in algebra and the highest English branches, down to the alphabet, a school of sixty children in one room, and governed with executive ability.
She met Orrin Perkins while they were students at the Adams Academy. In December 1847, she married Rev. Perkins, a Universalist minister of Savoy, Massachusetts, who was pastor of the church in Bernardston, Massachusetts. She was a pastor's wife three years in that place, several years in Wilmington, Massachusetts for a time in Shirley, Massachusetts, and twelve years in Winchester, New Hampshire. The years were passed in a parsonage home, visiting the sick, comforting the mourners, teaching in the Sunday schools and keeping a hospitable home. Her student-life was continued. She read history, studied French and German and took care of three daughters. For many years, Rev. Perkins was State Superintendent of Schools of New Hampshire.