Representative Leonard Fletcher Parker View All Years

HON. LEONARD PARKER.

MR. SPEAKER—Your committee appointed to draft resolutions commemorative of the life, public services and character of Honorable Leonard Parker, a former member of the House, respectfully submits the following:

Professor Leonard Fletcher Parker, a valued member of the Twelfth General Assembly, died at Grinnell, December 11, 1911, aged eighty-six. He was a native of the state of New York, where he was born August 3, 1825. He was of puritan and revolutionary stock. Both parents were born at Lowell, Massachusetts, and among his ancestors were early officials of the town of Concord, where the war of the revolution began.

Left fatherless at the age of only four years, he was reared on the little farm where he was born, getting the ordinary schooling of the locality. When about of age he went to Oberlin, where he was graduated in 1851. During a part of his career at that college, he was tutor as well as student. Leaving there, he contemplated entering the missionary field, but failing health, which it was feared was before long to terminate fatally, caused him to abandon what to him was a cherished ambition. After teaching for three years at Brownsville, Pa., he came to Grinnell in 1856, where he taught a preparatory school, which he was enabled to attach to Iowa College (now Grinnell College) when that institution was removed to that town in 1860. From that time until 1865, Mr. Parker was the virtual principal of the school, he and his wife being spoken of as “the life and light of the college.” He continued to teach at the college until he accepted an invitation to take the chair of ancient languages at the State University. Meantime he was for four years the first county superintendent of the county, and also served as an officer in the Forty-sixth Iowa. In 1867 he was elected to the General Assembly where he at once took rank with the ablest of the body. As chairman of the committee on schools, he was especially valuable in guarding the interest of education in the state. He was also helpful in getting into the railroad grant, acts of that General Assembly the reservation to the legislature of power to fix rates of fare and freight on the road of the companies accepting the grants.

In 1869 he was again chosen superintendent of the common schools of the county. Next year he went to the state university where he occupied latterly, the chair of history. In the early years of his residence in Iowa, he had served as “trustee” of that institution. That was before the creation of the board of regents.

In 1887 he returned to Grinnell, where he took the chair of history. As an educator, Professor Parker stood in the highest rank. At a reception tendered him in the state of North Dakota, a judge of the supreme court of that state said this of him, “He had done more to enable student-life than any man I ever met.” He gave to the world a “History of Poweshiek County,” a work of much higher grade than most publications that are spoken of as county histories. His was also a valuable work on “Higher Education in Iowa.”

In 1853 he was married to Miss Sarah Candace Pearse, his college classmate. To them were born five children, of whom four preceded their parents in death. The surviving one is Mrs. Harriet Parker Campbell, a graduate of our State University, as is also her husband, long chief justice of Colorado.

Professor Parker’s devoted wife was called hence several years before her husband. Three years later he was united in marriage with Mrs. Nellie Greene Clarke, also a graduate of Oberlin, by whom he is survived.

Resolved, That the House of Representatives, while mourning the loss of such a man, cannot but feel a measure of gratification that the educational interests of Iowa have had the helpful constructive work of one who in his own career helped make the more true his own observation that “Iowa pioneers had a passion for education.”

Resolved, That this memorial be entered on the Journal of this House as an expression of our appreciation of Iowa for one who was of so much service to her educational interests and that a copy hereof, duly attested, be transmitted to the family of Professor Parker.

RALPH SHERMAN,

HERBERT A. HUFF,

WALTER P. JENSEN,

Committee.

Adopted April 17, 1913.