Isaac Parker

Isaac Parker (June 17, 1768 – July 25, 1830) was a Massachusetts Congressman and jurist, including Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court from 1814 to his death. Biography He was born in Boston in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, the son of Daniel Parker, a goldsmith, and Margaret (née Jarvis) Parker. He was descended from John Parker, of Bideford, Devon, who emigrated to America in 1629 and whose children settled in Charlestown. After preparation at the Latin Grammar School, he entered Harvard at the age of fourteen and graduated in 1786 with high honors. For a short time he taught at the Latin School. Then, after studying law and being admitted to the bar, he moved to Castine, in what was later the state of Maine. There he set up his law practice, later moving to Portland and holding several local offices. On June 17, 1794, he married Rebecca Hall, daughter of Joseph Hall of Medford, a descendant of John Hall who settled in Concord in 1658. They had eight children. He was a member of the Brattle Street Church. In 1796, when he was twenty-eight, Parker was elected as a Federalist to the 5th Congress, but after one term of which little record of activity is available, he retired voluntarily to become United States Marshal for the Maine district (serving from March 5, 1799, to December 21, 1803). He was displaced upon Thomas Jefferson's accession to the presidency and returned to his law practice. He had made his impression, however, and on January 28, 1806, Governor Caleb Strong, upon the death of Justice Simeon Strong, appointed him an associate justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Parker was inclined to refuse the honor, but upon his friends' urgent solicitations accepted and moved to Boston. He was shortly called upon to sit in the trial of T. O. Selfridge, charged with shooting the son of Benjamin Austin in a political quarrel. Feelings ran high and Parker won a great reputation for impartiality. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1811. In 1814 he was elevated to the chief justiceship. In 1816 he was inaugurated as first Royall Professor of Law at Harvard. It was not a teaching chair, and in May 1817 he laid before the Corporation a plan for a law school. The plan was adopted and Harvard Law School was established, with Asahel Stearns as first instructor. Parker continued to lecture until 1827.