Isaac Parker was born on June 17, 1768 in Boston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts, United States. He was the son of Daniel Parker, a goldsmith, and Margaret (Jarvis) Parker. He was descended from John Parker, of Bideford, Devon, who emigrated to America in 1629 and whose children settled in Charlestown, Massachussets.
Education
After preparation at the Latin Grammar School, Isaac Parker entered Harvard at the age of fourteen and graduated in 1786 with high honors.
Career
For a short time Isaac Parker taught at the Latin School, then he moved to Castine, in what was later the state of Maine. There he set up his law practice. In 1796, when he was twenty-eight, he was elected to 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. He was displaced upon Jefferson's accession to the presidency and returned to his law practice. He had made his impression, however, and in 1806 he was appointed a judge of the supreme court of Massachusetts. 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. Feeling ran high and Parker won a great reputation for impartiality.
In 1816 he was inaugurated as first Royall Professor of Law at Harvard. It was not a teaching chair, and on May 1817 he laid before the Corporation a plan for a law school. The plan was adopted and the school established, with Asahel Stearns as first instructor. Parker continued to lecture until 1827. He was also an overseer of Harvard and a trustee of Bowdoin and served as president of the Massachusetts constitutional convention of 1820. His published works were confined to his judicial decisions and to a few orations, revealing a somewhat less florid style than that which characterized the times. Parker's decisions illuminate both the man's character and the jurisprudence of the period. They indicate a mind of exceptional clarity and penetration, albeit with a sensitivity to the needs of changing times. It was a time when equity was more important than law. Parker rendered this kind of service, and many of his decisions came to be recognized as authoritative generally through the state and federal courts.
In addition Isaac Parker rendered no small service by skilfully consolidating the reforms in the Massachusetts judicial system, instituted in the early years of the century. He died on July 25, 1830.
Achievements
Politics
Isaac Parker was a member of Federalist party.
Membership
Isaac Parker was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1819.
Personality
Isaac Parker's character was eminently suited to his role. Above the pettinesses of party strife, free from affectation, at the same time both patient and gay, he carried into his public life the rectitude of an active and sincere religious conviction.
Connections
On June 19, 1794, Isaac Parker married Rebecca Hall, daughter of Joseph Hall of Medford, a descendant of John Hall who settled in Concord in 1658. They had eight children.