John Parkman

Quick Facts

Significance:

Boston Vigilance Committee member, Unitarian minister, abolitionist

Place of Birth:

Boston, Massachusetts

Date of Birth:

1813

Place of Death:

Pepperrell, Massachusetts

Date of Death:

September 24, 1883

Place of Burial:

Boston, Massachusetts

Reverend John Parkman fought for the abolition of slavery on and off the pulpit. 

John Parkman, born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1813 to a prominent Boston Brahmin family, found his calling as a Unitarian minister. After completing his education at Harvard in 1831, Parkman preached as a minister in Greenfield, Massachusetts, and then Dover, New Hampshire. Parkman married Susan Sturgis in 1835 and together, the couple had five children.¹

Parkman quickly became “an admirable exception to the general pro-slavery character of the priesthood.”² Parkman joined other Unitarian ministers to use his position in the church to advocate on behalf of the antislavery cause. In 1843, Maria Weston Chapman published an excerpt from one of Parkman’s sermons in The Liberty Bell. In “Slavery and the Pulpit,” Parkman argued that clergymen should preach anti-slavery doctrines:

The subject of American Slavery is a fitting topic for the pulpit, because, like all other great moral evils, it must be destroyed by public opinion...It is not claiming too much to say, that ministers, as a body, do exert an influence upon a vast number of individuals in this country, incomparably greater than that wielded by any other class of men. If it is their duty to exert their influence upon public opinion against other great moral evils, why not against this?³

Parkman recognized the power of the clergy in the abolitionist movement—he gave rousing sermons, signed petitions with other ministers, all while contributing to local antislavery organizations and papers.⁴

With the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, Parkman joined other abolitionists to form the third and final iteration of the Boston Vigilance Committee, an organization providing support for those seeking freedom from slavery on the Underground Railroad. 

As a member of the committee, Parkman collected funds from anonymous donors in 1850, and he and his mother Susan both donated five dollars to the committee in 1851. Parkman accompanied Theodore Parker and Hannah Stevenson in bringing Ellen Craft to the safety of Parker’s home during the Craft’s escape from Boston in 1850. Additionally, Parkman became involved in a controversy over an article he wrote on the rendition of Thomas Sims for the Christian Register. Parkman protested against the paper’s decision to not publish the piece for circulation in Boston, as did Samuel May Jr.⁵

In 1854, during the arrest of freedom seeker Anthony Burns, Parkman stayed in the household of fellow Unitarian minister, Ezra Stiles Garnett. Garnett, who had previously preached to his congregation that the Fugitive Slave Law should be obeyed, had been unaware of Parkman’s involvement with the Vigilance Committee. Parkman recalled: 

While the trial was going on, Dr. Garnett never lost an opportunity of having a fling at the Abolitionists. I was accustomed to hear him denounce their violence and fanaticism, with a due degree of patience; but sharing in the excitement of this particular juncture, being in fact a member of the Vigilance Committee, I did not listen to him as patiently as I was accustomed to do. I was especially annoyed by the –as it seemed to me—indifferent and unfeeling way in which he spoke of the poor fugitive slave.⁶

Despite tensions within the ministry over the Fugitive Slave Law, Parkman continued to serve as a member of the Boston Vigilance Committee.

When President Abraham Lincoln called for more men to enlist to fight in the US Civil War in 1862, Parkman helped his son Theodore inquire about receiving a military commission. Theodore ultimately enlisted as a private soldier in the Massachusetts 45th Regiment to avoid any delay. In 1862, Theodore died in battle in North Carolina.⁷

After the Civil War, Reverend Parkman continued to dedicate his efforts to helping others: he served on the executive committee for the New-England Freemen’s Aid Society, and later as the president of the Home for Aged Colored Women on Beacon Hill.⁸

In 1883, Parkman tragically drowned in the Nashua River in Pepperell, Massachusetts. His remains are interred in Boston, Massachusetts.⁹

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Footnotes

1. “John Parkman,” Massachusetts, U.S., Town and Vital Records, 1620-1988 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011, https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/2495/records/18325620; “Clergyman Missing,” The Daily Item, September 27, 1883, 1; John Scales, History of Strafford County, New Hampshire and Representative Citizens, (Chicago: Richmond-Arnold, 1914), 123, https://archive.org/details/historyofstraffo00scal_0/page/122/mode/2up. 
2. “Extracts from the Journal of Agents,” National Anti-Slavery Standard, June 23, 1842, 10. 
3. John Parkman, “Slavery and the Pulpit,” The Liberty Bell, 1839, 184-185, https://archive.org/details/libertybell1843chap/page/184/mode/2up. 
4. James Freeman Clarke, Anti-Slavery Days, (New York: R. Worthington, 1884), 131; “The Unitarian Protest,” Liberator, November 14, 1845, 3; “Cash Received at the N.E. Anti-Slavery Convention,” Liberator, June 6, 1845, 3; “Treasurer’s Receipts,” National Anti-Slavery Standard, June 23, 1842, 11.
5. Francis Jackson, Account Book of Francis Jackson, Treasurer The Vigilance Committee of Boston, Dr. Irving H. Bartlett collection, 1830-1880, W. B. Nickerson Cape Cod History Archives, https://archive.org/details/drirvinghbartlet19bart/page/n3/mode/2up, 7, 15; Theodore Parker in Centenary Edition [of the Writings of Theodore Parker], (Boston: American Unitarian Association, 1907), https://archive.org/details/centenaryeditio00parkgoog/mode/2up?q=%22John+parkman%22; Letter from John Parkman, Staten Island, [N.Y.], to Samuel Joseph May, Dec. 8, 1851, Boston Public Library Rare Books Department, https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/dv144f693.  
6. John Parkman in William Channing Gannett, Ezra Stiles Gannett, Unitarian minister in Boston, 1824-1871, a Memoir, (Boston: American Unitarian Association, 1884), 288-289; Albert J. Von Frank, The Trials of Anthony Burns: Freedom and Slavery in Emerson’s Boston, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 271. 
7. “Theodore Parkman,” Find a Grave, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/18941741/theodore-parkman. 
8. The Freedmen's Record, January 1867, 16; “Home for Aged Colored Women,” Boston Evening Transcript, January 14, 1880, 1; “Home for Aged Colored Women,” Boston Globe, January 15, 1873, 8. 
9. “John Parkman,” in the Massachusetts, U.S., Death Records, 1841-1915, Ancestry.com. Massachusetts, U.S., Death Records, 1841-1915 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2013, https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/2101/records/2291297; “Clergyman Missing,” The Daily Item, September 27, 1883, 1.