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Stanislaus Perry Stanislaus F. Perry, was the first Acadian to run successfully for the Prince Edward Island Legislature. Probably encouraged by James Warburton, he won a seat for the Liberals in the 1854 election. He campaigned, not in his home riding of 1st Prince, but in 2nd Prince where the Acadian populations of Egmont Bay, Mont-Carmel and Miscouche counted heavily. In 1858, following an electoral reform that changed riding boundaries to add more seats to the Legislature, Perry's constituency was made smaller and re-named 3rd Prince, Perry, was successful, but the election was a close call for the Liberals, who won with a bare majority of two seats. When Assembly met, one Liberal refused to take the oath of office and neither party could agree on a speaker. After two days the House was dissolved and new elections were called. . Perry worked to assemble the liberal-conservative coalition that brought James C. Pope to power and was rewarded in 1873 with an appointment as Speaker of the House. In addition to being payment for his contributions to the coalition, Perry's promotion was partly attributed to the governments desire to appease the Acadian community, which was complaining about its exclusion from political appointments even thought it had been, through its two MLAs, instrumental in forming the coalition government. Perry, did not remain in the Speaker's chair for long. In 1874 he returned to the Liberal Party and ran successfully for a seat in the House of Commons. Like many other Island politicians he had previously declared himself against Confederation, and even stated in 1867 that he would leave the Island if it were annexed to Canada! Ironically, Ottawa is where he died 10 months after winning his final election in 1897. In a political career that spanned five decades, Stanislaus F. Perry ran in 13 provincial and 8 federal elections, meeting defeat 3 times provincially and 4 times federally. The first Island Acadian elected to the Prince Edward Island Legislature, and the first Acadian to occupy its Speaker's Chair, he was also the first Acadian elected to the House of Commons. He represented Prince County four times between 1874 and his death in office in 1898.