Francis Parkman Writes to His Sister

United States # 158, 1873 3c Washington, green on October 19th, 1878 double franked cover from New York to Montreal. Addressed to Mrs. Cordner, care Rev. Dr. Cordner, Montreal, Canada. Double cancellation New York, Oct 19, 1:30 P.M. Backstamp Montreal, A.M. OC 23 78.

Caroline Hall Parkman Cordner was the wife of Unitarian minister the Rev. Dr. John Cordner and sister of American author Francis Parkman, Jr. This letter to Caroline, addressed in Francis Parkman's distinctive hand, is undoubtedly from her brother.

This cover, then, is tangentially related to Nova Scotia history due to Parkman's epic seven book series France and England in North America (1865–1892), which recounts much of the history of the province up until 1759 and the end of the French regime in North America.

Caroline Hall Parkman and her brother Francis were descendants of Elias Parkman, who had

settled in Massachusetts in the 17th century, and their mother’s family was connected to the Cottons among whom had been the Puritan divine Cotton Mather. Their grandfather, Samuel Parkman, was a wealthy merchant and shipowner of Boston. It was he who commissioned Gilbert Stuart to paint George Washington then gifted the portrait on July 4th, 1806, to the city of Boston. It hung at Fanueil Hall and is now at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. He also commissioned Paul Revere to cast a bronze bell for his father the Rev Ebenezer Parkman's Westborough Massachusetts church. The bell was moved to Boston's Old South Church where the Boston Tea Party originated.

Caroline's father the Rev. Francis Parkman D.D. was a prominent Unitarian minister, pastoring the Unitarian New North Church in Boston from 1813 to 1849. In 1809 he was the Vice President of the Massachusetts Bible Society. He was also President of the Massachusetts Humane Society, which funded the establishment of the Insane Hospital, Charity beds at Massachusetts General Hospital, an establishment for the Lying-in Women, and lifeboats to help save mariners. He married Sarah Cabot January 27th, 1818, in Boston. On 23 Nov 1818, Sarah died of complications shortly after the birth of their first child Sarah Cabot Parkman. Francis then married Caroline Hall on 10 May 1822 in Medford, Massachusetts. Francis and Caroline had seven children: Francis, Caroline Hall, Mary Agnes, George, Mary Brooks, John Eliot, and Elizabeth Willard. Rev Francis Parkman DD died of "apoplexy" at 65 years of age on 12 Nov 1852 in Boston at Bowdoin Square. He is buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Of Francis Parkman, Caroline's brother, little needs to be said. His books remain in print. The following links to a brief biography published in Harvard Magazine.

Vita: Francis Parkman

Carolin's future husband, John Cordner grew up near Belfast in Northern Ireland, the son of a clockmaker. His family was Irish Presbyterian. But there was acrimonious polarization between orthodox Calvinists and liberals within Irish Presbyterianism. Many of the latter were avowedly Arians or Unitarians and were also political radicals. They were ousted from the main Presbyterian body in 1829 and established their non-subscribing movement (non-subscribing to the Westminster Confession). After several years of successful self-employment Cordner decided to prepare for Unitarian ministry through studies in Belfast. Henry Montgomery, leader of the new movement, whose thinking set a lifelong stamp upon Cordner’s, supervised his studies. At the time of Cordner’s ordination in 1843 a group of Unitarians in Montreal had established a congregation and begun looking for a settled minister. Since many of them had come originally from Ireland, they asked Montgomery if he could find a suitable candidate. He strongly recommended Cordner and an invitation was extended. Cordner accepted this pioneering role and was ordained in Ireland on 12 September, the same day on which the Montreal congregation became a member of the Remonstrant Synod of Ulster. He arrived in Montreal on 4 November.

Cordner launched his Montreal ministry with vigor. To defend and disseminate Unitarian views, he began in 1844 a monthly journal, The Bible Christian. Having attracted new members, and with a congregation numbering 200 in which the business community was prominently represented, he initiated construction of a church on Beaver Hall Hill. The new church, seating 450, was opened in 1845. That year Cordner obtained the right, through legislation, to hold baptismal, marriage, and burial registers on behalf of Unitarians. Early in 1846, he delivered a well-advertised series of doctrinal lectures, which attracted large audiences and provoked a storm of denunciations from Protestant pulpits and newspapers.

The Unitarian Chruch at Beaver Hall Hill, Montreal

The statements that drew such a response were conservative enough by Unitarian standards, Cordner’s religion being Bible-centred. However, Montreal in 1846 was not prepared to hear that reason must be the final arbiter in religious belief, that God is an undivided unity, that Jesus was a human being (though divinely commissioned), and that his death was significant as an example of fidelity to principle at all costs rather than as an atoning sacrifice for sin. No less shocking was Cordner’s rejection of the doctrine of original sin in favour of a conception of human nature as open to continuous progress under providential guidance.

Cordner became active in public affairs, using his oratorical gifts to good effect. He was one of the leaders in local efforts to aid those suffering in his native Ireland as a consequence of the famine of 1847. He supported the uprisings in Europe the following year as an expression of God’s judgment on oppressors. “The people”, he said, “shall rise up as a great lion.” In 1849 he went to Europe as a delegate to the Paris Peace Convention. He worked for the establishment of a more humane system for treatment of the insane, for a system of public education, and for a wide range of other social improvements. He campaigned on behalf of women’s rights and against capital punishment. He took a leading role during the American Civil War in resisting the support for the South promoted by profit-seeking Montreal merchants and was a major speaker at a great rally in Montreal in 1861 to protest the proposed extradition of a runaway slave. His opposition to efforts to involve the British Empire in the conflict was expressed in a pamphlet widely reprinted on both sides of the Atlantic, which a London newspaper described as “the right word, spoken in the right spirit, in the right time and place."

On his arrival in North America, Cordner had established excellent relations with the thriving American Unitarian movement, especially with New England Unitarians. His marriage in Boston on October 20th, 1852 to Caroline Hall Parkman, sister of the historian Francis Parkman, cemented these ties (they would have three daughters).

He saw in the province of Canada, and later in the country, a divinely provided opportunity for building a righteous nation, and he attacked as apostasy the politics of expediency practiced by Sir John A. Macdonald as well as the popular enthusiasm for material progress regardless of human cost. He was, however, silent on confederation, over which his congregation was divided.

Since 1858 Cordner had increasingly suffered from poor health, and from 1872 only the insistence of his congregation that he remain prevented his retirement. It was finally accepted in 1879, and three years later he moved to Boston; there he could enjoy a milder climate, Parkman’s company, and the companionship of many Unitarian colleagues, while working on a limited scale for his denomination. In June 1894 he died at his home on Chestnut Street of “old age prostatic disease” and “hypostatic congestion of the lungs.” Though he had claimed in 1851 to be no lover of controversy, Cordner had spent the greater part of his ministry in Montreal in the thick of it, and he continued to write on controversial issues until shortly before his death. Phillip Hewett, “CORDNER, JOHN,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 12, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003