Amasa J. Parker Writes A Letter To His Wife

On December 31, 1837, Democrat Amasa J. Parker, Congressman from New York, sat down at his quarters in Mrs.

Pittman's boarding house in Washington, D.C. to write a letter to his wife, miles away at their Catskills home in Delhi, New York.

Parker's letter of December 31 includes a seating chart indicating Mrs. Pittman's regular diners, a group that included future presidents Millard Fillmore of New York and James Buchanan of Pennsylvania.

Parker was elected as a Democrat to the 25th United States Congress, serving from March 4, 1837, to March 3, 1839, as the representative from Delaware and Broome counties. Afterwards he resumed the practice of law. In 1844, he moved to Albany, New York and was Judge of the Third Circuit from 1844 to 1847. In 1847 he was elected a justice of the New York Supreme Court for the third district, and in 1854 was one of the ex officio judges of the New York Court of Appeals.

He was one of the founders of the Albany (New York) Law School in 1851. He was twice defeated as a Democratic candidate for Governor of New York, in 1856 by Republican John Alsop King, and in 1858 by Republican Edwin D. Morgan. He was a delegate to the New York State Constitutional Convention of 1867.

He married Harriet Langdon Roberts, granddaughter of Woodbury Langdon, one of New Hampshire's representatives to the Continental Congress. They had four children, among them General Amasa J. Parker, Jr. of the National Guards of the State of New York, and Mary Parker who married Erastus Corning (1827-1897) and was the mother of Edwin Corning.

He was buried at the Albany Rural Cemetery.