1807-1890
Amasa Junius Parker served in 1854. Born in Sharon, Conn., Jun. 2, 1807. Principal of Hudson (New York) Academy at age 16 (1823-1827). Union College graduate, 1825. Admitted to practice 1828. Surrogate, Delaware County, 1832. Appointed district attorney, Delaware County, 1833. Member of state assembly, 1833, 1834. State university regent, 1835. Representative (Democrat) to Congress, 1837-1839. Vice chancellor and circuit judge, Third Circuit, 1844-1847. Presided over antirent trials, 1845. Elected to state supreme court, third district, 1847, serving eight years. Delegate to constitutional convention of 1867. Defeated as Democratic candidate for governor 1856, 1858. President, Democratic state convention, 1861. Cofounder and law professor at Albany Law School. Delegate to State Constitutional Convention, 1867. Edited Parker’s Reports (1858-1877). Died in Albany, N.Y., May 13, 1890, leaving a son and three daughters, one of whom was Mrs. Erastus Corning. Internment in Albany Rural Cemetery. See 1 McAdam, History of the Bench and Bar of New York, New York History Co. (1897), p. 440. Obituary, The New York Times, May 14, 1890. Murray, Centennial History of Delaware County, 1797-1897 (www.dcnyhistory.org/murray17971897.html); http://bioguide.congress.gov. Pictured in 3 Chester, Legal and Judicial History of New York, p. 47. His portrait is hanging in the Court of Appeals anteroom, south wall.
This biography appears in The Judges of the New York Court of Appeals: A Biographical History, ed. Hon. Albert M. Rosenblatt (New York: Fordham University Press, 2007). It has not been updated since publication.