Aaron F. Perry
Aaron F. Perry, like Judge Taft, is from the Green Mountain State, born at Leicester, Vermont, January 1, 1815——like him was educated at Yale, and cast his fortunes in Ohio first settling in Columbus, where he had a successive law partners Gov. Dennison and Gen. Carrington. In 1854 he removed to Cincinnati and became a law partner with Judge Taft and Columbus Thomas M. Key. As a lawyer he has made enduring marks upon the history of his country—notably in the case of Vananingham against Burnside, involving the legal right to arrest a private citizen for indulgence in the freedom of speech in opposition to the to the measures of a government struggling for its life against citizens in armed rebellion. Mr. Perry in his politics was originally a Whig, then a Republican, and in 1870 was elected to Congress by the Republicans, where he took a leading part. During the war era no man, in our judgment, in the Cincinnati region, was so effective as he in upholding the hands of government by public addresses, irresistible from their grasp and clearness of statement, beauty of diction with keenness of wit, and delivered with a grace and ease of manner, and a power that so captivated the multitudes that ever assembled to hear him, that they were always sorry when he closed. So important, were services to Ohio at this period, that Gov. Dennison thanked him in his annual message. Although suffering from a malady, deafness, that warps the disposition of many sensitive natures, Mr. Perry seems not at all affected by it, but everywhere and to every one appears with an overflow of good feeling that renders his presence, and after thoughts of him, to a high degree pleasant.
From Historical Collections of Ohio: By Henry Howe; Pub. 1888