Thomas Parker (Maine judge)

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

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

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, F.G., A History of Farmington, Franklin County, Maine, from the Earliest Explorations to the Present Time, 1776-1885, Press of Knowlton, McLeary, and Company, (1885), p. 547 https://books.google.com/books?id=r7MTAAAAYAAJ
  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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