[4] In 1779, he began working, and in 1785, when he turned 21, he became legally entitled to a small bequest that had been left to him by his grandfather, Thomas Handasyd Peck, a Boston merchant who dealt largely in furs and hats.

He sailed as supercargo on the Astrea, captain James Magee, owned by Elias Hasket Derby,[5] to Canton in 1789 with a cargo including ginseng, cheese, lard, wine, and iron.

In 1815, Perkins and his brother James opened a Mediterranean office to buy Turkish opium for resale in China.

In addition, Perkins was politically active in the Federalist Party, serving terms as state senator and representative from 1805–1817.

[11] Described as "a sixty-foot-long creature" by coastal vessel captain Parson Bentley, a skeptical Colonel Perkins decided to attempt to observe it himself.

As the object approached them, they observed that its motion was not like that of a common snake, either on land or in the water, "but evidently the verticle movement of the caterpillar."

[10] While in his nineties, Godfrey Cabot sponsored the restoration of the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology's (MCZ) complete Kronosaurus skeleton.

Together, they had the following children:[13][9] Upon retirement, Perkins built a summer home on Swan Island in the Kennebec River near Richmond, Maine.

He helped the island achieve independent municipal status by paying legal fees for its charter and the town was renamed Perkins in gratitude.

Colonel Perkins died on January 11, 1854, in Brookline, Massachusetts, and is buried in the family plot at Mount Auburn Cemetery.

[21][22] Through his daughter Mary Ann, he was the grandfather of Mary Cary, who married Harvard Professor Cornelius Conway Felton (later president of Harvard University), and Elizabeth Cabot Cary (1822–1907), the co-founder and first president of Radcliffe College, who married Louis Agassiz (1807–1873), a Swiss-American biologist and geologist.