THEOPHILUS

See also:

• PARSONS
• PARSONS (or PERSONS), ROBERT (1546-161o)
• THEOPHILUS PARSONS (1750-1813)

PARSONS (1750-1813)  , American jurist, was born in Byfield, Massachusetts, on the 24th of February 1750, the son of a clergyman . He graduated from Harvard College in 1769, was a schoolmaster at Falmouth (now Portland), Maine, in 1770-1773, studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1774 . In 1800 he removed to Boston . He was chief justice of the supreme court of Massachusetts from 18o6 until his death in Boston on the 3oth of October 1813 . In politics he took an active part as one of the Federalist leaders in the state . He was a member of the Essex County convention of 1778, called to protest against the proposed state constitution, and as a member of the " Essex Junto " was probably the author of The Essex Result, which helped to secure the rejection of the constitution at the polls . He was a member of the state constitutional convention of 1779-1780, and one of the committee of twenty-six which drafted the constitution; he was also a delegate to the state convention of 1788 which ratified the Federal Constitution; and according to tradition was the author of the famous " Conciliatory Resolutions," or proposed amendments to the constitution, which did much to win over Samuel Adams and John Hancock to the side of ratification . His Commentaries on the Laws of the United States (1836) contains some of his more important legal opinions . His son THEOPHILUS PARSONS (1797-1882), who was Dane professor of law at Harvard from 1848 to 187o, is remembered chiefly as the author of a series of useful legal treatises, and some books in support of Swedenborgian doctrines; he wrote a life of his father (Boston, 1859) .