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Biography of Theodore ParkerName: Theodore ParkerBirth Date: August 24, 1810 Death Date: May 10, 1860 Place of Birth: Lexington, Massachusetts, United States Nationality: American Gender: Male Occupations: clergyman Theodore Parker Theodore Parker (1810-1860), American clergyman and militant, was a leading advocate of transcendentalism and a vocal abolitionist.Theodore Parker was born in Lexington, Mass., on Aug. 24, 1810. His schooling was scanty, but he eagerly educated himself. By the time he was 17 he knew enough to teach school, and for the next 4 years he worked in local elementary schools. In 1830 he passed the entrance examinations for Harvard, but he did not have enough money to enroll as a resident student and so he continued with his teaching. In 1832 he opened his own school in Watertown, Mass. He also studied for the course examinations which Harvard allowed him to take.Having accumulated a modest amount of money, Parker enrolled in the Harvard Divinity School in 1834. Although he later called it an "embalming" institution, he reveled in his studies. He learned no less than 20 languages there. The faculty was already discarding some of the doctrines …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…education, prison reform, and temperance. The deepening struggle over slavery aroused his greatest efforts as well as the fiercest public opposition to them. His A Letter to the People of the United States Touching the Matter of Slavery appeared in 1848. He took an active part in attempts to rescue fugitive slaves from the Massachusetts authorities. He aided John Brown of Kansas and encouraged the antislavery efforts of such political leaders as Senator Charles Sumner.After a strenuous lecture tour in 1857, Parker took sick. In the next 2 years his condition grew worse, and in desperation he decided to travel. He died in Florence, Italy, on May 10, 1860. Further Reading The best biography of Parker is Henry Steele Commager, Theodore Parker (1936; with a new introduction, 1960). Parker is discussed in William R. Hutchison, The Transcendentalist Ministers: Church Reform in the New England Renaissance (1959), and Lawrence Lader, The Bold Brahmins: New England's War against Slavery, 1831-1863 (1961). |