Lake County Ohio GenWeb

Robert Breck Parkman

The following article is from the Painesville Telegraph, 4 April 1900 page 1 and reprinted in Vol. 13, No. 4 page 5 of the October 1987 "LakeLines," the newsletter of the Lake County Genealogical Society, retranscribed here by Cathi Salmi.

First marriage within the present limits of Painesville.

Mr. Robert Breck Parkman was born in Massachusetts, May 21, 1771. His father was a soldier of the revolution, and soon after the war removed with his family to Oneida County, New York, and his son, Robert, was his father's chief assistant in the labors of the new settlement.

In 1792 Robert B. went to Cayuga county and began the study of law, teaching school at the same time in order to defray his expenses, and was also engaged in building the first bridge across Cayuga lake, which was over one mile in length, and was completed and opened for travel in 1799.

Early in 1800 Mr. Parkman was admitted to the bar, and at once began the practice of his profession in the state of New York. In 1808 he passed an examination before the supreme court and was admitted to practice law in the state of Ohio. This examination must have been before Samuel Huntington, the first chief justice of the state of Ohio, who was living in Cleveland and was also the third governor of Ohio, who was elected by the people. At the time of his election in 1808 he was living in Painesville in the same house in which Mr. Parkman was married in 1803, a double log house. The writer of this article has seen that house occupied by a family by the name of Skinner since he came to Ohio in 1828. In 1805 Mr. Parkman was appointed postmaster of the township of Parkman, Geauga county, and held the office until 1829. His commission was signed by Gideon Granger, and the route was from Warren to Parkman. There were then but two or three families in Parkman, and of course the receipts of the office must have been quite small, but the postage on a letter then was twenty-five cents if it came over three hundred miles. In 1815 the receipts of the post office were ten dollars and seventy-five cents.

In 1800 at the first court of Geauga county after its organization, which was held at New Market, now known as the Hine homestead in Painesville, June 6, Mr. Parkman was appointed prosecuting attorney, and continued in the office until 1817. Mr. Parkman at the time of his appointment as prosecutor was the only lawyer then in Geauga county. There was one other lawyer present at that term of court, John Stark Edwards, who lived at that time in Mesopotamia, Trumbull county, and they were the only lawyers who appeared on the record of that first court of Geauga county.

His early associates in his professi9on were, besides Mr. Edwards, Hon. Peter Hitchcock, who came to Burton in 1806, and Samuel W. Phelps, who settled in Painesville in 1807. In 1819 Mr. Parkman was appointed probate judge, but held the office only a short time. In 1805 his eldest daughter, Adeline, was born, and was the first white child born in Parkman. In 1823 she was married to Julian C. Huntington of Painesville, and died at Painesville in 1874 of consumption, her mother having died in Parkman with the same disease in 1820. Mr. and Mrs. Parkman were the grandparents of our townsman, Edward Huntington, Esq.