Per another letter from Charlie Reha, Monsieur Perey was in the USA in 1835, and after Henriette's parents died, he sent for the family in that year. The passport papers of Henriette indicate Francois was in Virginia by March, 1835. He has not yet been found on a passenger list, and the search for such a listing can be concentrated to between March, 1831 and March, 1835.

Per the passport of Henriette, her husband lived at [Ripley] Court House, Jackson County, Virginia in 1835. Ripley is located in the central most western portion of the state, about 15 miles from the Ohio River. Henriette and the two young daughters came from Switzerland to be with Francois in July, 1835.

Henriette's Swiss passport #271 gives her description (age 31, height 5'2", hair brown, forehead covered, eyebrows brown, eyes grey, nose medium, mouth normal, chin round, face oval and complexion tan), and indicates approvals in March, 1835, to travel via France to the United States, which apparently was after March 20, 1835. Other correspondence from the time indicates Henriette probably was accompanied by some friends, or maybe persons hired for the purpose, Albert, Jean and Jonas Schory (or Schori). These men have not been located on the 1840 or 1850 Jackson County census. Searching for them on the 1840 census of all the States through Ancestry.com did not locate any of them.

Passenger Lists of arrival at New York, M237, Roll 27, List 424, indicates 31 year old Henriette Perey and daughters, Louise age 5, and Marie age 4, originating in Switzerland, sailed from Havre on the Ship Tiger and arrived in New York on July 3, 1835, just in time for the celebration of the 4th of July which must have been quite rousing to the newcomers from Switzerland. Ancestry says the list names the occupation of all three as cultivator. Next to them on the passenger list are fellow Swiss Jean and Albert [surname listed Jozy?], a baker and butcher.

A 1912 obituary of daughter Marie states, "After making their home in Ripley they went to Wheeling, from there to Louisville, Kentucky, thence to Vicksburg, Mississippi and from there to Fort Smith, Arkansas, where Mme. Perey died. She is buried on what is known as the Bluff." The obituary adds, "M. Perey was away at the time of this sad event and the two little girls were left in charge of Christian friends of theirs in Little Rock and Fort Smith." Daughter Marie's Bible places the death of Henriette as November 4, 1839, and says she was buried on the bluff at Fort Smith, Arkansas. Her grave has not been found.

Travel through the interior on the United States in the mid 1830s usually included river boat travel on the Ohio River, so the Perey family likely navigated the Ohio upstream for near 100 miles to get to Wheeling. Nard Jones in his 1959 book "The Great Command" wrote about the 1836 boat trip of the Whitman missionary party down the Ohio, saying, "missionaries and Indians were no novelty on the Ohio. Nor were gamblers, land speculators, farmers or tinware pedlars. The river boats of the burgeoning nation were bearing a strange, various, redolent and noisy human cargo from every State in the Union and from many other parts of the globe. And always the cargo would include a goodly sprinkling of the species of men who liked to be known as 'half horse and half alligator' making a living simply by going up and down the river."

The National Road across the Appalachians went through Wheeling and by 1833 had been extended as far as Columbus, Ohio. The Perey family could have gone down the Ohio River to get to Louisville, but instead chose to go up river to Wheeling, perhaps to travel the newly extended National Road and check out Ohio, but maybe also just to have more choices of river travel available from Wheeling. In any event, per the itinerary mentioned in the obituary of Marie, they got to Louisville and probably went down the Ohio River from there to pick up the Mississippi at the south border of Illinois and then on down the Mississippi to Vicksburg. The obituary does not indicate whether the family spent any time residing at any of the stops. They may not have needed to go as far south as Vicksburg, since they could have traveled across Arkansas to Fort Smith from further up the river.

What is not explained in Marie's obituary is why Francois and his daughters did not find each other after the 1839 death of Henriette. If they were taken to Little Rock and were there when Francois returned to Fort Smith, then he may have learned of the death of Henriette but failed to determine what happened to the girls and who took them, and the people who took the girls, not having heard from their father, may have presumed he had also died. Whatever communication process may have been established to let Francois know the whereabouts of his daughters on his return to Arkansas apparently failed. In any event, the Perey girls were at some point believed to be orphans and were taken in by the Reverend and Mrs. C. C. Townsend, who ran a girls school near Fort Smith. They remained at the school until their adulthood.

The indications from the information found on Reverend Townsend are that he did not come to the Fort Smith area until 1845, almost six years after the death of Henriette. Marie and Louise, then about 14 and 15 years old, probably attended his boarding school for the last couple years before reaching age 18. Reverend Townsend is reported to have later ran an orphanage in Iowa, but we have no confirmation of him running an orphanage in the Fort Smith area, or of even being in the Fort Smith area before 1845, so we are still in need of an explanation of who had care of the girls between the death of their mother in 1839, and Townsend coming there in 1845.

We have no information as to who were the Christian friends in Little Rock and Fort Smith, with whom the girls were supposedly left. To get a feel of what Francois was dealing with in looking for his daughters, on the 1840 Arkansas census, Crawford County, where Fort Smith was located, had 3,648 people, in 565 households, including 34 free "coloreds", and 618 slaves, and Pulaski County, where Little Rock was located, was slightly larger, with 5,350 people in 661 households, including 105 free "coloreds" and 1,284 slaves.

Francois reportedly made inquiries through the years to Switzerland to see if there was news of the girls, though why he did not receive such word until years later has not been determined. Perhaps the girls, ages 8 and 9 at the death of their mother, were not able to provide much useful information for their guardians to contact the Swiss, and the girls were only able to contact Swiss authorities effectively once they were older and had gotten married. Then too, with both parents presumed dead, the guardians may not have seen much reason to expend the effort to make Swiss contacts.

After failing to locate his daughters, Francois made his way back to Virginia. He has not been located on the 1840 Arkansas or Virginia census index, nor on a line by line search of the census film for Jackson County. The Jackson County 1840 census enumerator asked for Court certification of the census because the population of the County was "diversely situated", perhaps indicating he believed he might not have located everyone. Francois, widowed for one year, is reportedly shown in a Jackson County, Virginia marriage book as Francis Parey with a November, 1840 marriage to Martha Pickens. No Pickens enumeration was found in the line by line review of the 1840 Jackson County census, but there are 27 Pickens indexed by Ancestry on the 1850 Jackson census, all in district 27. Some researchers say Martha was named Parsons, and there are lots of Parsons found on the 1850 Jackson County census and two Parsons families shown on the 1840 census, both of which include females of the likely age for Martha.

As the Perey girls approached age 18, in 1847-1848, they corresponded with Swiss authorities, informing them of the death of their mother, and the girls learned from the authorities of an inheritance they were owed in place of their mother from the estate of their maternal grandmother. As part of that correspondence, an October,1848 from the Swiss consul in New Orleans to Marie Perey, who had just married Michael Mayers in August, informed her, "I am most happy to have in my power to give you some information which will gladden your heart and which I have this moment learnt. Your father Francois Perey supposed to have died long ago is alive in good health residing now at Ripley - Jackson State of Virginia. I hear of it through an intimate friend of his, Mr. [Moneron?-This could possibly be the Swiss man who was in the household next to Francois on the 1850 census at Ripley, indexed on line and viewed on film as Manune, a 45 year old Clerk], who perhaps you may recollect for he has known both you and your sister some time ago. Your father is by no means wealthy but I understand owns a small farm. It appears that he wrote to Mr. [Moneron?] requesting him to make some inquiries about you and it has made me happy to have in my power to give him the information I was possessed of."

Around the same time as Francois and his daughters were discovering it was only Henriette who had died, Jacque Pahud and his wife Louise, who was a sister of Francois Perey, and their children came to Ripley from Switzerland.

On the 1850 census of the Town of Ripley, Jackson County, Virginia, dated September 28, 1850, Francois is there as Francis surname spelling illegible and could be Perey, Parey or Perry (indexed as Francis Parey in one book and as Francis Perry on line and in another book and as Pewy at Ancestry on line), age 40, born in Switzerland, with his second family, illiterate wife, Martha age 38, born in Virginia, and children Lewis 9, Virginia 6, and John 1, all born in Virginia. Francis is listed as a farmer, with no real estate value shown. The Pahud family was enumerated there on the 1850 census also. The two households were in the same District 27 on the 1850 census, but enumerated many pages and 550 households apart.

Marie Perey Mayers, the daughter of Francois, gave birth at Ripley, Virginia on 9 June, 1856, to a daughter named Virginia Louise, apparently while visiting her Perey kin, and possibly named her daughter after Mrs. Pahud, who had just given birth to a daughter, Adrianne the prior October. We do not know if Francois was alive at the time of the birth of his granddaughter in 1856. In fact, we have no direct evidence Francois ever met with his daughters after the 1848 letter. However, Marie Mayers may have been, at the time of the birth, visiting her father there or else participating in settling his estate if he was already deceased, or just visiting the other Swiss relatives there.

Francois could have died in Jackson County before 1856, because he is not found in the County death book which starts with 1857, per a lookup volunteer, but the volunteer also says many deaths after 1857 were not reported. Checking the LDS film #1862549, Part 3, which includes probate inventories, sales and claims from Jackson County records 1849-1861 did not locate any reference to Francois, which is consistent with the 1848 letter from the Consul indicating the farm was small and Francois was not wealthy, and with the absence of any real estate value on the 1850 census.

The 1860 Jackson County census shows Martha Perry, age 50, a farmer, with the three children living with her but without Francois. The census of 1850 indicated Martha was illiterate, which is consistent with her going by the name Perry, though Francois himself may have anglicized his name to Francis Perry. A Jackson County lookup volunteer reported that an annotated version of the1860 census, apparently produced by the County Historical Society, refers to Martha as widow of Francis, apparently without citation of proof. The actual census enumerations did not list marital status until 1880. It is also possible Francois was not in fact dead by the time of the 1860 census, but rather was separated from Martha. The Pahud family had moved to Illinois by the 1860 census.

Daughter Marie's obituary from 1912 states that "after becoming a citizen of America" Francois was a "true Virginian and with her in the Civil War losing heavily. In 1863 his fortune was reduced to a small farm in Ripley, Jackson County, Virginia, where he passed his last years." The likely source of this information would be Marie's daughter Martha, and it's accuracy has not been verified. If true, it leaves the question of why Francois is not in the household of his wife and children on the 1860 census.

If Francois did live at least into the 1860s, there is no indication of him having further contact with his daughters from his first marriage. Tracking his children from the second marriage might provide a clue as to what happened to Francois.

From the second marriage of Francois, daughter Virginia Perry married on the last day of 1865. She and her husband were found on the 1870 census at Bath County, Virginia, and on the 1880 in Pocahontas County, WV. Son Lewis is shown in the marriage book as marrying in Jackson County in May, 1866, and he is found on the 1870 census in Putnam County. Unmarried son John is shown on the 1870 census living in the household of Isaiah Vail in West Virginia, Jackson County, as reported by a Jackson County volunteer from an annotated census listing the parents of John as Francis and Martha.

Neither Francois nor Martha was with any of their three children on the 1870 census, and not finding Martha on the 1870 West Virginia census index under Perry, and not finding her listed on the WV marriage CD, means it is fairly likely she died before 1870, when she would have been 58 to 60 years old. She was not found by a volunteer checking the Jackson County deaths book from 1860 forward, so she probably died in a different County. There is, however, the possibility to be further explored that Francois was still alive in 1870 and that Martha was living with him. However, a check of an every name index book for the 1870 West Virginia census and of the 1870 Ancestry every name index on line did not find any Perey, and no Perry named Francis, Frank, Martha or the initials F or M, nor any likely Perry born in Switzerland.

Searching later censuses for the children of the second family of Francois has led to the interesting possibility that Francois may have lived at least until after the 1880 census. On the 1880 census, a John Perry is found nearby at Kanawha County, West Virginia, the same county where a Louis and Sarah Perry are found, who are very likely the son and daughter-in-law of Francois. John's age of 31 is consistent with earlier censuses of the son of Francois named John. This John is married to 35 year old named Virginia and has a son and two daughters, John, 6, Naomi, 4, and Effa, 1, all born after the 1870 census, where he was found as single. The household includes his father, Francis, a widower, age 71, employed as a carpenter, the same as for Louis Perry and for four month unemployed John, and which was also the occupation shown for John in 1870. The birth place for the father is listed as West Virginia but the enumerator listed West Virginia for every person and parental birth on the entire page, making it quite posssible the question was not in fact asked or the answers not recorded. Though the 1912 obituary of daughter Marie does seem to indicate Francois never again left Ripley, the obituary could be in error or he could have been away to stay with John briefly at the time of the 1880 census.

Francois does not seem to have left much in the way of historical records in the United States. The only census on which he has surely been found is the 1850. His second mariage in 1840 has been recorded. No probate or death record has been found. Land records have not been checked. One thing Francois did leave lots of though, is American descendants, nine generations to date.