Benjamin Parke

Benjamin Parke (September 2, 1777 – July 12, 1835) was an American lawyer, politician, militia officer, businessman, treaty negotiator in the Indiana Territory, and United States federal judge in Indiana after it attained statehood in 1816. He served as the Indiana Territory’s attorney general from 1804 to 1808; as a representative to the territory’s first general assembly in 1805; as its first territorial delegate to the United States House of Representatives from 1805 to 1808; as one of the five Knox County delegates to the Indiana constitutional convention of 1816; and as a territorial court judge from 1808 to 1816. After Indiana became a state, Parke was appointed the first United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Indiana, serving from 1817 until his death in 1835. In addition to his judicial and political work, he attained the rank of colonel in the territorial militia under William Henry Harrison, fought at the Battle of Tippecanoe, helped negotiate major land cession treaties with Native American tribes, and played a leading role in the early civic, educational, and historical institutions of Indiana.

Parke was born on September 2, 1777, in New Jersey, the son of a farmer. He received only a limited formal education and left home at the age of twenty. In 1797 he moved to Lexington, Kentucky, then a growing legal and commercial center in the trans-Appalachian West. There he read law in the office of James Brown, a prominent attorney who later became a U.S. senator and diplomat. Parke was admitted to the bar in 1799 and began his legal career in Kentucky. During his years in Lexington he married Elizabeth “Eliza” Barton. The couple had two children, a son, Barton, and a daughter, Sarah. Sarah later married Abram (or Abraham) Hite of Louisville, Kentucky, and had one son. After Sarah’s death, Parke and his wife raised their grandson. A cholera epidemic in 1833 claimed the lives of Parke’s son and grandson, leaving him without surviving heirs.

Around 1800–1801, Parke and his wife moved from Kentucky to Vincennes, then the capital of the Indiana Territory and one of the principal settlements in the Old Northwest. He engaged in private law practice there until 1804 and quickly became associated with Governor William Henry Harrison, whose political ally he remained throughout the territorial period. Harrison appointed Parke as Attorney General of the Indiana Territory, a position he held from 1804 to 1808. In 1805 Parke was elected as one of the two Knox County representatives to the lower house of Indiana’s first territorial legislature, which convened at Vincennes on July 20, 1805. A Federalist and supporter of Harrison’s administration, Parke backed slavery and indenturing laws then under debate in the territory. During his early years in Vincennes, he also helped to found the town’s public library and was a founder and member of the first board of trustees of Vincennes University, one of the earliest institutions of higher education in the region.

In 1805 the Indiana territorial legislature elected Parke as its first territorial delegate to the United States House of Representatives. He was reelected in 1807 and served in the Ninth and Tenth Congresses from December 12, 1805, until March 1, 1808. As a nonvoting delegate, he represented the interests of the sparsely populated frontier territory in the national legislature. Responding to petitions from some of his constituents and in line with his own views, Parke asked Congress to amend the Northwest Ordinance to permit slavery in Indiana, but his effort was unsuccessful and the fundamental antislavery provision of the ordinance remained in force. Parke resigned his congressional seat in 1808 in anticipation of his appointment to the territorial bench and to accept a position on Governor Harrison’s staff.

President Thomas Jefferson appointed Parke as a judge for the Indiana Territory in 1808, and he served as a territorial judge until 1816, when Indiana achieved statehood. During Tecumseh’s War and the War of 1812, he joined the Indiana Territory’s militia and rose through the ranks from captain to major and ultimately colonel, serving on the staff of General William Henry Harrison, who was also the territorial governor. Parke initially commanded a company of Indiana Light Dragoons and fought at the Battle of Tippecanoe on November 7, 1811. After Major Joseph Hamilton Daveiss was killed in that engagement, Parke, then a major, assumed command of the cavalry. Following his wartime service, he returned to his judicial duties. In 1816 he was named presiding judge of the Indiana Circuit Court, First Judicial Circuit, and served in that capacity until 1817.

Parke played a significant role in Indiana’s transition from territory to statehood. In June 1816 he was one of the forty-three delegates, and one of five from Knox County, who attended the constitutional convention at Corydon. Although initially a leader of the Federalist minority that opposed immediate statehood, once the convention voted in favor of statehood he took an active part in the proceedings and helped draft Indiana’s first state constitution. He served on the nine-member committee that drafted Article V of the constitution, which established the judicial branch of the state government, defining the Supreme Court, circuit courts, and such other courts as the Indiana General Assembly might create. Parke chaired a select committee to redraft the article’s initial version and was among the signers of the new constitution, which the delegates adopted on June 29, 1816, the final day of the convention. The Indiana General Assembly subsequently designated him as one of the three presiding judges of the first (western) judicial district of the new state.

In addition to his judicial and legislative work, Parke was active in treaty negotiations and land policy. In 1816 he and territorial governor Thomas Posey negotiated a treaty with the Wea and Kickapoo peoples. Two years later President James Madison appointed Parke, Michigan territorial governor Lewis Cass, and Indiana governor Jonathan Jennings as commissioners to negotiate the Treaty of Saint Mary’s, also known as the New Purchase treaty, with the Lenape (Delaware), the Miami, and other tribes. Under the terms of this treaty, the Delaware relinquished their right to occupy land in Indiana, and the Miami agreed to cede more than seven million acres of tribal lands in Ohio and Indiana, opening vast areas to American settlement. In the same period, Parke was appointed Monroe County sales agent and became a land speculator in Bloomington, Indiana. Although he never resided there, in 1816 he helped select the township in what became Monroe County for the use of a state seminary, an institution that later developed into Indiana University at Bloomington.

Following Indiana’s admission to the Union on December 11, 1816, Parke’s judicial career shifted to the federal bench. President James Monroe nominated him on March 5, 1817, to a new seat on the United States District Court for the District of Indiana, created by 3 Stat. 390. The Senate confirmed his nomination the same day, and he received his commission on March 6, 1817. Parke thus became the first United States District Judge for Indiana, a position he held until his death on July 12, 1835. While serving on the federal court, he continued to participate in civic and educational initiatives. He helped establish a law library at Indianapolis to support the state’s growing legal community and remained involved in the affairs of Vincennes University and other public institutions.

Parke’s later years were marked by serious financial reverses and declining health. In the 1820s he suffered severe losses through his involvement with the Vincennes Steam Mill Company. Named an agent of the company in 1821, he saw the mill burn under mysterious circumstances the following year, destroying the company’s paper assets held in the Vincennes State Bank, which Parke had helped organize with other investors. The bank failed, and Parke was the only officer of the mill company and the bank to assume personal responsibility for the debts. He sold his property in Vincennes and used the proceeds to satisfy creditors, then retired to a modest home in Salem, Washington County, Indiana, while continuing to serve as United States District Judge and devoting much of his income to repaying obligations. In December 1830 he was elected the first president of the Indiana Historical Society, serving in that role until his death in 1835; his successor was Samuel Merrill. Parke’s health deteriorated in his final years, and he suffered from tubercular consumption (tuberculosis) and paralysis of his right side. He died at Salem on July 12, 1835, and is buried at Crown Hill Cemetery in Salem. Remembered by contemporaries for his honesty, integrity, and devotion to civic duty and public service, Parke was regarded as an exemplar of early Indiana’s legal and political leadership.