Jay Fred Perfect (also recorded as Fred J. Perfect; surname also inaccurately reported as "Perleck") is believed to have been born in Iowa, in June of 1870; his parents were Ohio-born Thomas Perfect and New Jersey-born Elizabeth (Condit) Perfect. (The 1900 U.S. Census gives those birthplaces, and is thought to be correct.) He married Reva May Pearson at Syracuse, New York, on the day before Christmas of 1895; the first of their two daughters, Suzette, was born in 1897. No primary birth record for their second daughter, Marjorie Belle, has been found to date, but her gravestone shows her lifespan stretching from 1900 to 1972, and her Find A Grave memorial gives a precise, if unsourced, birthdate of 20 June 1900[1]. If accurate, this means that she was born just 18 days after the 1900 census was taken: the original handwritten record is dated 2 June.
The life of Jay Fred Perfect, before and after his presence in June of 1900 with his pregnant wife and their first daughter at Auburn, New York, appears colorful. Five years before the 1895 marriage to Reva May Pearson, he is evidently the Jay F. Perfect, age 21 or 22, who married Emma L. Anderson, age 18 or 19, at Council Bluffs, Iowa, on the 15th of November, 1890[2]. The outcome of that union must have been either annulment or divorce, as Emma Anderson – under her maiden name, but showing the marriage as her second – is recorded as marrying Harry Joseph Haskell at Council Bluffs on the 15th of December, 1902[3]. Her first union had certainly ended by that Christmas Eve Day of 1895 when Jay Fred Perfect married, second, Reva May Pearson. It is known that Reva died of tuberculosis in 1908, but her former spouse is not mentioned in her obituary, either as having predeceased, or survived her. The inference is clear that either there had been a divorce, or he had simply abandoned the family prior to that time. Moving past the first two marriages, he now also seems certain to be the Jay F. Perfect who married, third, Laura Virginia Wilbourn, some dozen years his junior, in 1905. The reason for his absence from Reva's obituary is now plain enough: he had married someone else three years prior to her passing. Complicating matters somewhat is an unsourced family history which, while reporting that marriage, and dating this Jay F. Perfect's birth to 23 June 1870 – a flawless match to the birthdate of this profile's subject – also gives that man's middle name as "Fish" rather than "Fred"[4]; this is presumed to be an error, unless Jay F. Perfect at some point elected to change his middle name from "Fish" to "Fred". Husband and third wife are buried at Baltimore, Maryland, in Loudon Park Cemetery's Rose Hill plot. The interred Jay F. Perfect is shown in his (unsourced) Find A Grave memorial to have been born in 1870, and to have died in 1942[5]; a Baltimore Sun death notice dates his passing to May 9, 1942, and a Baltimore cemetery record shows that he was buried on May 12th. Laura Virginia (Wilbourn) Perfect is shown as born on an unknown date, but as having died in 1956[6].
The 1900 U.S. Census dates the birth of this profile's subject to June, 1870, and places it in Nebraska. A Social Security record of 8 June 1948 shows a Jay Fred Perfect born on 23 June 1870 (no location given); this is in fact the same Fred J. Perfect of the 1900 census, shown as born in June of 1870. The Jay Fred Perfect who is the man in the Social Security record is then found in other census records pre- and post-1900, and his birthplace is not shown as Nebraska: in one instance it is oddly shown as "N.S." – Nova Scotia – but in most other records, as Iowa, which is taken to be accurate[7][8]. Nebraska and Iowa are contiguous; a Jay Fred Perfect is in fact found in Omaha in a business directory of 1893[9], and is presumably the J.F. Perfect found there in a similar directory two years prior[10] – when the Fred J. Perfect of the 1900 census would have been age 21 and might reasonably have been engaged in some manner of business. The evidence all points to these records as pertaining to the same man.
The origins of Jay Fred Perfect's apparent third spouse are found in the 1900 U.S. Census for Baltimore, Maryland; she was born there in August of 1883, to parents Lewis D. and Laura V. Wilbourn[11]. The date matches the birthdate of 15 August 1883 that is given in the previously-cited Condit family genealogy.
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P > Perfect > Jay Fred Perfect
Categories: Loudon Park Cemetery, Baltimore, Maryland