Parker, George F. (1847-1928)

PARKER

Posted By: Karon Velau (email)
Date: 12/1/2016 at 21:51:37

The Advocate-Tribune newspaper, Indianola, Iowa, Thursday, Sep 5, 1907, p.3

George F. Parker
George F. Parker, who is to deliver the address at convocation of the fall term of Simpson
college, on Wed. Sept. 11th, was formerly well-known in this state of which he was a resident for more than an quarter of a century. Born in Lafayette, Indiana, December 30, 1847, he came with his father to Carlisle, in Warren county, in November 1854. There he passed the years of his boyhood and youth, learning in the hard work of the farm, everything that it could teach. His early education was obtained in the pioneer village school, where he was never able to obtain a full three months instruction in any single year. In 1866, his father, who had been one of the most active and enterprising of the citizens of the new community, sold his farm and removed into the lower part of Bloomfield township, Polk county, where the young man was able to obtain two winters of somewhat better school privileges. From here, he went, in the fall of 1868, to the state university of Iowa City, where he remained for five terms, until the spring of 1870, when he returned home and resumed work on his father’s farm. With the exception of six months given to teaching a country school, this was kept up until September 1873, when he returned to Warren county to start The Tribune in Indianola. As will easily be seen he had no experience in newspaper work, but in spite of this, he at once attained success due largely to a very comprehensive knowledge of American history and politics, an enormous power for work and an energy which was indomitable. In 1876, he went to Des Moines having purchased a half interest in the State Leader of which he took entire editorial charge conducting the paper through the Tilden campaign of 1876 and the disputed election and the electoral commission. Having sold his paper he went to Europe for a time for study. Upon his return he finally left Iowa in 1890 going first to Indiana where he became an editorial writer upon the Indianapolis Sentinel and was also private secretary to William H. English, democratic candidate for vice-president. Pursuant to a purpose formed, he kept on to the eastward, spending a winter in Washington on the Post of that city, founded and then edited by Stilson Hutchins, who had an interesting newspaper career in Dubuque during the civil war. For a time, he edited the Union in Manchester, New Hampshire, leaving to take a place on the editorial staff of the Times, in Philadelphia under Colonel Alexander K. McClure. After three years he entered politics as assistant postmaster of Philadelphia, a place which he resigned to resume newspaper work as managing editor of a new paper, the Press, started in New York in 1887 under the control of the late Postmaster General Frank Hatton, formerly of Iowa. In 1888, began his long and intimate association with Grover Cleveland, then president. Mr. Parker edited the democratic campaign text-book of that year and later took entire charge of the literary department of the national committee in New York. Returning to newspaper work he was active in the canvass which preceded Mr. Cleveland’s third nomination and election in 1892. He was appointed United States consul to Birmingham in March, 1893, and remained at that post until February, 1898. After his retirement, his stay in England was prolonged by engagement in private business followed by his appointment as commissioner of the St. Louis world’s fair in the united kingdom when his newspaper training stood him in good stead in procuring participation of that country in the exhibition of 1904. Coming home, finally in 1904, Mr. Parker was again associated with the democratic national committee as chief of the literary department having charge of documents and newspapers. He had thus been associated with five national democratic campaigns. In June 1905, he was the bearer of Mr. Thomas F. Ryan’s invitation to Mr. Cleveland to become one of the trustees of the stock of the Equitable Life Assurance Society and, at the first meeting of the new board, was elected its secretary, a post which he still holds. Mr. Parker is engaged in the work of the Episcopal church in the New York diocese, is chairman of the Membership committee of the Iowa society in New York, and active in the Pennsylvania Society. He has been a contributor to the Century, Atlantic Monthly, and other American magazines and to the Nineteenth Century and the Contemporary Review in England. He was also for ten years a special contributor to the London Times, on questions of American economic interest and importance.