Luther Parks Jr.

Quick Facts

Significance:

Boston Vigilance Committee member, doctor

Place of Birth:

Boston, Massachusetts

Date of Birth:

November 4, 1823

Place of Death:

Pau, France

Date of Death:

November 19, 1886

Place of Burial:

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cemetery Name:

Mount Auburn Cemetery

Dr. Luther Parks Jr. served as a member of the 1850 Boston Vigilance Committee.

Born on November 4, 1823, in Boston, Massachusetts, Luther Parks Jr. received his college and medical education at Harvard. After receiving his medical degree in 1847, Parks sailed to Ireland from the Charlestown Navy Yard on USS Jamestown. He participated in its humanitarian voyage, helping to provide relief to the Irish during the famine. On his return to Boston, Parks opened his own medical practice.¹

Parks worked as a physician at the Boston Lying-In Hospital and served in multiple medical organizations such as the Boston Dispensary, the Suffolk District Medical Society, the Medical and Surgical Journal, and the American Medical Association. He gained further practice in another visit to Ireland in 1852, where he perfected his skills in obstetrics.²

In addition his profession, Dr. Parks participated in reform movements. In 1850, following the passage of a new Fugitive Slave Law, Parks and other activists joined the final iteration of the Boston Vigilance Committee. The organization aided freedom seekers coming to Boston on the Underground Railroad. As a member, Parks donated funds to the organization’s efforts in 1851.³

Additionally, Parks joined the Boston School Committee, where he served on a special committee to discuss racial desegregation of Boston’s public schools in 1854. While Parks found no issue with allowing separate schools to exist for Black and white students, he voiced the minority opinion that any child should be able to attend any of the schools that they wish, not just those closest to their residence.⁴

Though retired from his practice, in 1862, Park’s personal friend and Massachusetts Governor John Andrew requested that Parks aid General George McClellan as a volunteer surgeon during the Siege of Yorktown during the US Civil War. Parks and five other doctors went at Andrew’s request.⁵

Following his father’s death in 1872, Parks moved from the US to Europe. He lived there until his death on November 19, 1886, in Pau, France.⁶

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Footnotes

1. “Luther Parks, M.D.,” Journal of the American Medical Association, volume 9, issue 14, October 1, 1887, 448; Boston Evening Transcript, November 22, 1886, 4.  
2. “Luther Parks, M.D.,” Journal of the American Medical Association, volume 9, issue 14, October 1, 1887, 448; “Eastern Massachusetts,” Springfield Daily Republican, January 30, 1869, 8; Boston Evening Transcript, February 1, 1868, 2; “Suffolk District Medical Society,” Boston Evening Transcript, May 6, 1856, 2; “Officers of the Boston Dispensary,” Boston Evening Transcript, October 17, 1848, 2.
3. "Members of the Committee of Vigilance," broadside printed by John Wilson, 1850, Massachusetts Historical Society; 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, 87; “The Fugitive Slave Law,” The Liberator, October 18, 1850, 2. 
4. “Commonwealth of Massachusetts,” The Liberator, March 30, 1855, 4; “Municipal Election,” Boston Evening Transcript, January 10, 1854, 2. 
5. “Luther Parks, M.D.,” Journal of the American Medical Association, volume 9, issue 14, October 1, 1887, 448; “Return of Boston Surgeons,” Boston Evening Transcript, May 19, 1862, 2; George Henry Gordon, The Organization and Early History of the Second Mass. Regiment of Infantry, (Boston: Rockwell & Churchill, 1873), 15. 
6. “Luther Parks, M.D.,” Journal of the American Medical Association, volume 9, issue 14, October 1, 1887, 448; “Deaths,” Boston Evening Transcript, November 20, 1886, 4; “Recent Deaths,” Boston Evening Transcript, November 22, 1886, 4.