Samuel Holden Parsons

Who was Samuel Holden Parsons?

Samuel Holden Parsons was an American lawyer, jurist, general in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, and a pioneer to the Ohio Country. Parsons was described as "Soldier, scholar, judge, one of the strongest arms on which Washington leaned, who first suggested the Continental Congress, from the story of whose life could almost be written the history of the Northern War" by Senator George F. Hoar of Massachusetts

Parsons was born in Lyme, Connecticut, the son of Jonathan Parsons and Phoebe Parsons. At the age of nine, his family moved to Newburyport, Massachusetts, where his father, an ardent supporter of the First Great Awakening, took charge of the town's new Presbyterian congregation.

Parsons graduated from Harvard College in 1756 and returned to Lyme to study law in the office of his uncle, Connecticut governor Matthew Griswold. He was admitted to the bar in 1759, and started his law practice in Lyme. In 1761, he married Mehitabel Mather, a great-great-great-granddaughter of Rev. Richard Mather. Well-connected politically, he was elected to the General Assembly in 1762, where he remained a representative until his removal to New London.