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Commodore Matthew Perry, along with his older brother Oliver Hazard Perry, grew up in Newport, Rhode Island. Their having lived in a seaport town most likely contributed to the brothers' decisions to make their living in the Navy, at sea. As you may remember in the report from Erie, Pennsylvania, Oliver Hazard Perry helped defeat the British in the naval battles of the War of 1812. Matthew Perry commanded the naval diplomatic expedition that opened Japan's closed society to foreign trade in 1854. It was considered one of the United States' most successful naval diplomatic operations.

Matthew Perry also supervised the contruction of, and then commanded, the first naval steamship, the Fulton.

This statue was carved by Peter Toth from a Douglas fir tree. It is twenty-three feet high and is of a chief of the Narragansetts named Enishkeetompauog Narragansett. Toth carved the statue to honor Native Americans . I include this photo--and everything I can find on Native Americans--in this website because all this country that I'm seeing was their country first. The statue stands in a park in the town of Narragansett Pier, Rhode Island. The pier washed away in a hurricane in 1938, but locals still refer to the downtown area as "the pier."