Representative Gorham Parks

Gorham Parks (May 27, 1794 – November 23, 1877) was a United States Representative from Maine and a Democratic Party candidate for governor of that state. He was born in Westfield, Massachusetts, where he attended the local common schools before pursuing higher education. Showing early academic promise, he entered Harvard University and graduated in 1813. While at Harvard he studied law, preparing for a professional career in the legal field at a time when formal legal education was increasingly valued in New England.

After completing his studies, Parks continued his legal training and was admitted to the bar in 1819. He subsequently moved to the District of Maine, then still part of Massachusetts but soon to become a separate state, and in 1823 established a law practice in Bangor. Bangor was emerging as a significant commercial and lumbering center, and Parks quickly became part of its professional and political life. His legal work and growing prominence in the community helped lay the foundation for his later political career.

Parks entered national politics as a supporter of Andrew Jackson and the Jacksonian wing of the Democratic Party. He was elected as a Jacksonian to the Twenty-third and Twenty-fourth Congresses, serving in the U.S. House of Representatives from March 4, 1833, to March 3, 1837. During his tenure in Congress, he aligned himself with the more radical elements of the Democratic Party and became a local leader of the Loco-foco faction. This group was strongly opposed to banks, paper money, and monopolies, reflecting a broader strain of anti-elitist and hard-money sentiment within Jacksonian democracy. In Bangor, his Loco-foco stance brought him into conflict with the so‑called “Bank Junto,” a group of more conservative Democrats that included prominent local figures Samuel Veazie, William Emerson, John Hodgdon, and Thomas A. Hill, who favored a more cautious approach to banking and commercial development.

In 1837 Parks was nominated by the Democratic Party as its candidate for governor of Maine. The contest was notable for the close personal and educational parallels between the two major candidates: Parks and his Whig opponent, Edward Kent, both resided in Bangor and were graduates of Harvard University. The campaign unfolded against the backdrop of the Panic of 1837 and the intense partisan debates over banking and economic policy that followed. In one of the closest gubernatorial elections in Maine’s history, Parks was narrowly defeated by Kent, losing by fewer than one thousand votes out of approximately 70,000 cast.

Following his gubernatorial defeat, Parks continued in public service through a series of federal appointments. He was appointed United States Marshal for the District of Maine, serving from 1838 to 1841, a position that placed him at the center of federal law enforcement in the state during a period of ongoing boundary tensions and commercial expansion. After a brief interval, he was appointed United States Attorney for the District of Maine, serving from 1843 to 1845, where he represented the federal government in civil and criminal matters in the federal courts. In 1845 he concluded his active political and legal career with an appointment as United States Consul at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, a post he held until 1849. This consular position involved protecting American commercial interests and citizens in one of South America’s most important ports and trading centers. Notably, the same consular post would later be held by his former gubernatorial rival, Edward Kent, underscoring the continued prominence of both men in public life.

In his later years, Parks left Maine and resided in New York. He died in Bay Ridge, New York, on November 23, 1877. He was interred in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, a burial place for many notable political and cultural figures of the nineteenth century. His family maintained a connection to public service and the law; his son, also named Gorham Parks, became Clerk of the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, and died in Albany in 1897.