Judge Thomas Parker, donor of Parker Hall at Bates College
Parker Hall at Bates College was named in Judge Parker's honor

Thomas Parker (1783–1860) was a judge, writer, and philanthropist from Maine, who is the namesake of Parker Hall at Bates College.

Parker was born in 1783 in Edgartown, Massachusetts but moved to Farmington, Maine as a child with his father, Elvation Parker, and eventually worked for a period as a stonemason. In 1807 he married Judith Thomas. Parker served as a County Commissioner for several years and in 1838 Governor Edward Kent appointed Parker to be a probate judge from Franklin County where he served until 1845.

Parker later carried on extensive business in the probate courts.[1] In 1846 Parker published a book on the History of Farmington Maine.[2]

In 1856 he donated $5,000 to Bates College then called the Maine State Seminary, and Parker Hall at Bates is named in his honor.[3]

He died in 1860.

References

  1. ↑ Butler, Francis Gould (1885). A History of Farmington, Franklin County, Maine, from the Earliest Explorations to the Present Time, 1776-1885. Press of Knowlton, McLeary, and Company.
  2. ↑ HISTORY OF FARMINGTON (1846) By the late Thomas Parker, Judge of Probate, Published by J S Swift 1875, http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~mefrankl/ParkersHist.htm
  3. ↑ Emeline Burlingame-Cheney, The Story of the Life and Work of Oren B. Cheney, Founder and First President of Bates College (Boston, MA: Morning Star Publishing House, 1907), p. 106
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