THEOPUILUS PARSONS. 411 



sible trust for seventy years. lie never sought or accepted any 

 office in city or State ; but few men were more sought for respon- 

 sible trusts, or ever served their day and generation more devotedly, 

 disinterestedly, and wisely. He seemed always to have a firm confi- 

 dence in his own judgment, and that confidence appears not to have 

 been misplaced. 



THEOPHILUS PARSONS. 



TiiEOPniLus Parsons was born in Newburyport on May 17, 

 1797, and died in Cambridge on Jan. 26, 1882. His father was the 

 celebrated Chief Justice of the same name. His mother, whose 

 maiden name was Elizabeth Greenleaf, was the daughter of Judge 

 Benjamin Greenleaf, of Newburyport, and the granddaughter of Dr. 

 Charles Cliauncy, of Boston, and through the latter she was lineally 

 descended from Dr. Charles Chauncy, the second President of Har- 

 vard College. When he was three years old his father removed from 

 Newburyport to Boston, where he continued to reside for thirteen 

 years and until his death. The son's boyhood, therefore, was spent 

 in Boston, and his earliest recollections must have been of that place. 

 During his boyhood his father procured a Mr. Elisha Clap to come to 

 Boston and oj^en a private school, and at this school the son was fitted 

 for College. At the age of fourteen — namely, in 1811 — he entered 

 Harvard College. His father was then Fellow of the College, and 

 Dr. Kirkland, his father's former pastor and most intimate and valued 

 friend, was President. With the latter the son went to live upon 

 entering College, and he continued to live with him during his entire 

 College course. His class at the time of its graduation numbered 

 sixty-six, and among his classmates were George Eustis, late Chief 

 Justice of Louisiana, Convers Francis, Thaddeus W. Harris, John 

 Jeffries, John A. Lowell, John G. Palfrey, and Jared Sparks. All 

 of these distinguished men he survived, the last of them, John G. 

 Palfrey, having died on April 26, 1881, and he was himself survived 

 by only two of his sixty-five class-mates. 



Immediately upon graduating, he entered the office of William 

 Prescott, the son of the hero of Bunker Hill and the father of the 

 historian, and then the acknowledged leader of the Suffolk Bar, and 

 began the study of law. In 1818 he was admitted to the Bar ; in 

 1822 he removed to Taunton, and there engaged in the practice of his 

 profession ; in 1828 he returned to Boston, and there continued the 

 practice of his profession for the next twenty years. In the summer 



