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Our cousin Steve (Stevens Call) Nelson, a great-grandson of Uncle Perry, has published (privately, for the family) a wonderful book1 chronicling several generations of his family, centering on his grandfather LeRay Decker, son of Perry and Elizabeth, and including an extensive and revealing account of Perry’s life and trials. Steve’s version, carefully documented, is on balance sympathetic, as a descendant’s work should be, but it doesn’t shy away from Uncle Perry’s faults and failings. I recommend the book; you’re welcome to read my copy, but it’ll have to stay pretty close to my library.

Without pretending to cover Uncle Perry’s very interesting life in this sketch, I’ll cite just one revealing anecdote:
“…Perry was in Kaysville near the home of his sister-in-law, Ester Emily, when he heard a woman scream. Not one to pass up a call for help he walked in and saw his sister-in-law poke her head out of a wardrobe. Her husband was beating his stepdaughter, a two-and-a-half-year-old girl, Clara Latham. Perry and William Bosworth then got into a fight and Perry got the best of him, knocking him to the floor. He picked up the child, telling Bosworth that he and his wife were free to visit but if he ever tried to claim the child he—Perry—would beat him to death. He then rode horseback with the child 25 miles to Salt Lake City to his own home. He presented the child to his wife telling her, ‘Here is a child for you.’ Clara took the Decker name and apparently lived with the Deckers for some time and was deeply loved as one of the family. She eventually married Thomas E. Browning, the Chief of Police of Ogden.”2
…This “kidnapping” must have been a rather violent affair and one where Perry asserted himself with enough intimidation that the child was never claimed by the mother or step-father. I’m sure Perry was not a man to be taken lightly.3
1Nelson, Stevens Call, Legacy Builders: The Story of LeRay Decker, His Wife, and Their Progenitors. Provo, Utah:2007.
2Decker, Karl, LeRay Decker’s Story, cited in Nelson, op. cit., p. 51
3Nelson, op. cit., p. 51

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