Parker, Neville

  • DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: Phillip Buckner, “PARKER, NEVILLE,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 9, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/parker_neville_9E.html
  • DCB profile:
    • Lawyer and judge; b. 8 June 1798 in Saint John, N.B., second son of Robert Parker, a Boston loyalist who became ordnance storekeeper and comptroller of customs at Saint John, and Jane Hatch, daughter of another Massachusetts loyalist; m. 22 April 1821 in St Andrews, N.B., Elizabeth Margaret Sheddon Wyer, and they had ten children; d. 6 Aug. 1869 at St Andrews.
    • Neville Parker followed the customary path of the children of New Brunswick’s small loyalist upper class in the early 19th century. He attended the Saint John Grammar School, King’s Collegiate School at Windsor, N.S., in 1811, and then King’s College, Windsor, from 1812 to 1816. After graduation he entered the legal profession, studying in the office of Ward Chipman Jr. He was admitted to the bar in 1819 and began to practise in St Andrews.
    • Neville Parker was a prominent member of New Brunswick’s establishment, but as a judge he was probably not above the average. Although James Hannay remembered him as a “very dignified old gentleman,” in his younger days he was known for his fiery temper. When still a youth he challenged General John Coffin to a duel, but the latter, who was 67, declined the invitation. In 1834 Parker was one of the leaders in the protest of the provincial bar against the appointment of an Englishman, James Carter, to the New Brunswick bench; his brother Robert had hoped to obtain the post. In 1846, when he was asked to serve with the lieutenant governor and Executive Council on a court to deal with cases of marriage and divorce, he refused on the grounds that extra funds were not provided for an usher and a suitable meeting-place for the court. The result was a prolonged and bitter conflict with Sir William Colebrooke and the Executive Council, to whom his actions seemed “a clear case of misbehavior.” During the 1850s Parker repeatedly took the lead in defending high judicial salaries against the demands of the assembly for reductions. It was these actions rather than his judicial decisions, which occasionally gave Neville Parker a prominence he otherwise neither sought nor merited.
  • Son of United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=6410
  • Find a Grave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/137552550/neville-parker