was designated St Johnstoun, and it continued to be known indifferently by this name and that of Perth down to the 17th century. Roman remains have often been found in excavations carried out within the existing boundaries, which suggests that the Roman settlement was at least twenty feet below the present surface. The obscurity of the early annals of the town is explained by the circumstance that Edward I. caused the records to be removed. Perth is stated to have been a burgh in 1106 and was made a royal burgh by William the Lion in 1210. During the Scottish wars of the Independence its fortifications were strengthened by Edward I. (1298). Robert Bruce several times ineffectually attempted to seize it, but in 1311 he succeeded in scaling the walls during a night attack. This was the fourth and most brilliant of the seven sieges which the city has sustained. Taken by Edward III. in 1335, it was recaptured in 1339. In 1396 the combat between the Clan Chattan and the Clan Quhele, described in Scott’s Fair Maid of Perth, took place on the North Inch in presence of Robert III. and his queen, Annabella Drummond. The Blackfriars’ monastery was the scene of the murder of James I. by Walter, earl of Atholl, in 1437. In consequence Perth lost its status as capital, in which it had succeeded to Scone, and the Parliament Courts were transferred to Edinburgh in 1482. Gowrie Palace was the scene of the mysterious “Gowrie” conspiracy against James VI. in 1600. The town was taken by Montrose in 1644, by Cromwell in 1651, and was occupied by Viscount Dundee in 1689. In 1715 the Old Pretender was proclaimed king at the Mercat Cross (Sept. 16), and the chevalier himself appeared in the city in the following January, only to leave it precipitately on the approach of the earl of Argyll. Prince Charles Edward spent a few days in Perth from the 3rd of September 1745. In both rebellions the magistrates took the side of the Crown and were supported by the townsfolk generally, the Jacobites drawing their strength mainly from the county noblemen and gentry with their retainers. Since then the city has devoted itself to the pursuits of trade and commerce. Perth was visited by plague in 1512, 1585–1587, 1608 and 1645; by cholera in 1832; and the floods of 1210, 1621, 1740, 1773 and 1814 were exceptionally severe.
Authorities.—Maidment, The Chronicle of Perth from 1210 to 1668 (1831); Penney, Traditions of Perth (1836); Lawson, The Book of Perth (1847); Peacock, Perth, its Annals and Archives (1849); Samuel Cowen, The Ancient Capital of Scotland (1904).
PERTH AMBOY, a city and port of entry of Middlesex county, New Jersey, U.S.A., at the mouth of the Raritan river, on
Raritan Bay and Staten Island Sound, about 15 m. S. by W.
of Newark. Pop (1910 census) 32,121. It is served by
the Pennsylvania, Lehigh Valley, Central of New Jersey and
Staten Island Rapid Transit railways, and by boats to New
York City. It is connected by a railway bridge (C.R.R.
of N.J.) and by a foot and wagon bridge with South Amboy,
on the south shore of the Raritan Perth Amboy has a good
harbour, shipyards and dry-docks. In the city still stands
Franklin Palace (erected in 1764–1774), the home of William
Franklin (1729–1813), a natural son of Benjamin Franklin and
the last royal governor of New Jersey. In the vicinity is the
Bartow House, in which William Dunlap (1766–1839), the art
historian, made his first drawings. Other buildings of historic
interest are the Parker Castle (c. 1729), a centre of Loyalist
influence at the time of the War of Independence, and the
Kearny Cottage, the home of “Madam Scribblerus,” a half-sister
of Captain James Lawrence. The city has various manufactures,
the factory product in 1905 being valued at $34,800,402.
Clay is obtained in the vicinity, and large shipments of coal are
made. Perth Amboy was founded in 1683. It was at first
called Amboy after the original Indian name; in 1684 the
proprietors named it Perth in honour of James, earl of Perth
(1648–1716), one of their number, and a few years later the two
names were combined. From 1686 until the end of the proprietary
government in 1702 Perth Amboy was the capital of
the province of East Jersey, and during the period of royal
government the general assembly and supreme court of New
jersey met alternately here and at Burlington. Perth Amboy
was incorporated as a city in 1718, and received a new charter
in 1784, and another in 1844, the last being revised in 1870.
The township of Perth Amboy was incorporated in 1693 and
in 1844 was included in the city.
PERTHES, FRIEDRICH CHRISTOPH (1772–1843), German
publisher, nephew of Johan Georg Perthes (q.v.), was born at Rudolstadt on the 21st of April 1772. At the age of fifteen
he became an apprentice in the service of Adam Friedrich
Böhme, a bookseller in Leipzig, with whom he remained for
about six years. In Hamburg, where he settled in 1793 as an
assistant to the bookseller B. G. Hoffmann, he started in 1796
a bookselling business of his own, and in 1798 he entered into
partnership with his brother-in-law, Johann Heinrich Besser
(1775–1826). By his marriage in 1797 with a daughter of the
poet, Matthias Claudius, he was brought into intimate relation
with a group of Protestant writers, who exercised a powerful
influence on the growth of his religious opinions. This, however,
did not prevent him from being on friendly terms with a number
of eminent Roman Catholic authors. Perthes was an ardent
patriot; and during the period of Napoleon’s supremacy he
distinguished himself by his steady resistance to French pretensions.
His zeal for the national cause led him, in 1810–1811, to
issue Das deutsche Museum, to which many of the foremost
publicists in Germany contributed. For some time the French
made it impossible for him to live in Hamburg; and when, in 1814,
he returned to that city he found that his business had greatly
diminished. In 1821, his wife having died, he left Hamburg,
transferring his business there to his partner, and went to Gotha,
where he established what ultimately became one of the first
publishing houses in Germany. It was owing to his initiation
that the Börsenverein der deutschen Buchhändler (Union of German
Booksellers) in Leipzig was founded in 1825. When the
foundation-stone of the fine building of the Union was laid in
1834, Perthes was made an honorary freeman of the city of
Leipzig, and in 1840 the university of Kiel conferred upon him
the degree of doctor of philosophy. Perthes died at Gotha on
the 18th of May 1843. His Life was written by his son, Klemens
Theodor Perthes (1809–1867), professor of law in the university
of Bonn, and author of Das deutsche Staatsleben vor der
Revolution (Hamburg and Gotha, 1845), and
Das Herbergswesen
der Handwerksgesellen (Gotha, 1856, and again 1883), whose
son Hermann Friedrich Perthes (1840–1883) was the founder
of the Fridericianum at Davos Platz. The publishing business
at Gotha was carried on by Perthes’s younger son, Andreas,
(1813–1890) and his grandson, Emil (1841–), until 1889,
when it was handed over to a company.
See also O. Adler, Friedrich and Karoline Perthes (Leipzig, 1900).
PERTHES, JOHAN GEORG JUSTUS (1749–1816), German
publisher, was born at Rudolstadt on the 11th of September 1749. In 1785 he founded at Gotha the business which bears his name (Justus Perthes). In this he was joined in 1814 by his son Wilhelm (1793–1853), who had been in the establishment of Justus’ nephew, Friedrich Christoph Perthes, at Hamburg. On the death of Justus at Gotha on the 2nd of May 1816, Wilhelm took entire control of the firm. He laid the foundation of the geographical branch of the business, for which it is chiefly famous, by publishing the Hand-atlas (1817–1823) of Adolf Stieler (1775–1836). Wilhelm Perthes engaged the collaboration of the most eminent German geographers of the time, including Heinrich Berghaus, Christian Gottlieb Reichard (1758–1837), who was associated with Stieler in the compilation of the atlas, Karl Spruner (1803–1892) and Emil von Sydow (1812–1873). The business passed to his son Bernard Wilhelm Perthes (1821–1857), who was associated with August Petermann (under whose direction the well-known periodical Petermanns Mitteilungen was founded) and Bruno Hassenstein (1839–1902); and subsequently to his son Bernard (1857–). In 1863 the firm first issued the Almanach de Gotha, a statistical, historical and genealogical annual (in French) of the various countries of the
