Frederick Perrin (5 December 1815 – 27 January 1889) was an American

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to dist ...

master. Perrin was born in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

, Great Britain and was descended from a Swiss family. He went to the United States in 1845. He played twice in the

American Chess Congress The American Chess Congress was a series of chess tournaments held in the United States, a predecessor to the current U.S. Chess Championship. It had nine editions, the first played in October 1857 and the last in August 1923. First American Ches ...

at New York 1857 (

Paul Morphy Paul Charles Morphy (June 22, 1837 – July 10, 1884) was an American chess player. He is considered to have been the greatest chess master of his era and is often considered the unofficial World Chess Champion. A chess prodigy, he was c ...

won) and Chicago 1874 (

George Henry Mackenzie George Henry Mackenzie (24 March 1837, North Kessock, Scotland – 14 April 1891, New York City) was a Scottish-born American chess master. Biography Mackenzie was educated mainly in Aberdeen, at the Aberdeen Grammar School and the Marischal ...

won). He participated several times in the New York Chess Club Tournament, winning in 1859.Edo Historical Chess Ratings – Perrin, Frederic
/ref> Perrin had been a professor of languages at

Princeton College Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ni ...

. He had mastered French and German alongside English. In the 1850s he was president of the New York Chess Club. In later years he was an honorary member of the Brooklyn Chess Club where he defeated McKenzie in a game a few weeks before his death. He died of

pneumonia Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of productive or dry cough, chest pain, fever, and difficulty breathing. The severi ...

at home at the corner of Pacific Street and

Flatbush Avenue Flatbush Avenue is a major avenue in the New York City Borough of Brooklyn. It runs from the Manhattan Bridge south-southeastward to Jamaica Bay, where it joins the Marine Parkway–Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge, which connects Brooklyn to the R ...

after three-weeks of illness. Reportedly his last words were "Doctor, I am puzzled over that last move of mine."

References

External links

Chessgames.com – Frederick Perrin
1815 births 1889 deaths American chess players English chess players Swiss chess players Deaths from pneumonia in New York City 19th-century chess players {{US-chess-bio-stub