Theophilus Parsons (professor)

Theophilus Parsons
Born	1797
Died	1882 (1883) (aged 85)
Education	Harvard College (1815)
Children	Emily Elizabeth Parsons
Father	Theophilus Parsons
Dane Professor of Law at Harvard Law School
In office 1848–1870
Succeeded by	Christopher Columbus Langdell

Portrait of Theophilus Parsons, by August Edouart, ca.1842

Theophilus Parsons (1797–1882) was Dane Professor of Law at Harvard from 1848 to 1870.

Parsons is remembered chiefly as the author of a series of useful legal treatises and some books in support of Swedenborgian doctrines.^[1] In 1824, he took a position as editor of the new United States Literary Gazette.^[2] He wrote a biography of his father, an American jurist who was also named Theophilus Parsons (1749–1813). It was published in Boston in 1859.^[3] He also edited and published the Civil War letters of his daughter, Emily Elizabeth Parsons, a nurse and administrator of Benton Barracks military hospital in St. Louis, Missouri.^[4]

He graduated from Harvard College in 1815.^[5]

Works

• "Distinguished Lawyers," Albany Law Journal Aug. 20, 1870, pp 126-7 online.
• A treatise on the law of partnership (1866) online
• Outlines of the religion and philosophy of Swedenborg (1876) online
• A treatise on maritime law (1859) online
• Address Commemorative of Rufus Choate (1859)

References

1. Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Parsons, Theophilus" . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
2. Glicksberg, Charles I. (December 1934). "Bryant and the United States Review". The New England Quarterly. 7 (4): 687n1, 689n5.
3. Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Parsons, Theophilus" . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
4. Parsons, Theophilus and Parsons, Emily Elizabeth, Memoir of Emily Elizabeth Parsons, Little Brown and Company (1880)
5. Bryant, William Cullen; Voss, Thomas G. (1975). The Letters of William Cullen Bryant: 1809-1836. Fordham Univ Press. p. 16. ISBN 9780823209910. Theophilus Parsons harvard 1882 1815.