Parson Parsons and His Sons

Jonathan Parsons was born in West Springfield in 1705, the son of a church deacon. As an adolescent he “worked at a trade,” but a Yale tutor named Jonathan Edwards persuaded him to try college.

Parsons graduated at the late age of twenty-four. He then studied more theology under Edwards, who had become the minister at Northampton.

In 1731 Parsons took the pulpit himself in the town of Lyme, Connecticut. He married Phebe Griswold, from a prominent local family, and they started having children—thirteen in all, but six died in infancy.

The children who grew up were four sons, born every two years from 1733 to 1739 (Marshfield, Jonathan, Samuel Holden, and Thomas), and three daughters, born 1748 to 1755 (Phebe, Lucia, and Lydia).

At Lyme the Rev. Mr. Parsons also got caught up in the “New Light” revival inspired by his old mentor Edwards and further inspired by the Rev. George Whitefield, who came through town in 1740. Parsons was soon known for his energetic preaching and evangelical outreach.

In 1745 the minister’s fervor grew too much for his congregation, and they decided on a separation. Parsons moved his family to Newbury to preach to a small “New Light” congregation that set itself up as Presbyterian, independent of New England’s independent network.

That meeting grew, erecting what’s now called the Old South Presbyterian Church in Newburyport in 1756. Whitefield died during a visit to Parsons in 1770 and was buried in its crypt. The minister’s wife Phebe died later the same year. He married the widow Lydia Clarkson of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1771. 

Of the Parsons sons, Marshfield and Samuel Holden moved back to their birthplace of Lyme. Marshfield was a merchant and with his succession of four wives kept a tavern. Samuel Holden graduated from Yale and became a lawyer. Jonathan, Jr., and Thomas kept Newbury as their base and went to sea.

In particular, Thomas Parsons had a son by his first wife, Mary Gibson, and four daughters by his second wife, Sarah Sawyer. The New-Hampshire Gazette shows a captain named Thomas Parsons sailing out of Portsmouth harbor:

• on the Charming Sally to Guadaloupe in 1762.
• on the Success to Dominica and the West Indies in 1769.
• on the Three Friends to the West Indies and Guadaloupe in 1770.

In February 1772, according to secondary sources, Capt. Thomas Parsons took a schooner out of Newburyport for another voyage to the Caribbean. He never came home.

TOMORROW: Mystery off Cape Sable.