Biographies
For
Muscatine County Iowa
1889



Source: Portrait and Biographical Album, Muscatine County, Iowa, 1889, page 271

HON. JOHN A. PARVIN, deceased, was numbered among the honored pioneers of Muscatine, County. It will be conceded throughout Iowa that few among her founders crossed the great river to their work with loftier purpose, or to give a truer devotion of their lives and influence to the building and furnishing of a noble Christian commonwealth, than the subject of this sketch. His work was always of the highest and best type. He was the organizer and teacher of the first Sunday-school and grammer school in the territory; was the " temperance Mayor" of Muscatine, under whose administration no saloon was licensed or tolerated; was the founder of the first temperance society in the Territory of Iowa; was an influential member of both Houses of the General Assembly; the author of the bill establishing the Reform School, now the Industrial School of Iowa, and its leading Trustee for eighteen years; was a member of the convention which framed the State Constitution, and was active and prominent in all the public movements of his generation.

Mr. Parvin was born in Fairfield, Cumberland Co., N. J., and was a son of Daniel and Elizabeth ( Sutton ) Parvin. His father was a mechanic, but exchanged his trade for a farm, the same on which John passed his life until the age of twenty-one. There were no free public schools in those days, but after an arduous service upon the farm during the summer, the future pioneer of Iowa went to a private district school in the winter, and by dint of hard application by candle light and in the morning before the family was astir, he accomplished in the succession of those winter terms a fair mastery of such studies as arithmetic, grammar, surveying, mensuration and navigation. On attaining his majority young Parvin followed the sea for some time, rather to acquaint himself with the practical side of navigation which he had studied at school than from nautical or romantic tastes.

In January, 1831, Mr. Parvin was united in marriage with an accomplished lady of New Jersey, and by their union two children were born: Lydia, who died in St. Louis of cholera, in 1849, and Thomas, who was left motherless at the age of six weeks. After his marriage Mr. Parvin engaged in teaching several years in New Jersey, but in 1837 the impulse stirred within him to go West was acted upon, and he landed at Cincinnati. He there followed his chosen profession for two years, when he started for Iowa, landing at Muscatine, then known as Bloomington, April 18, 1839. The embryo city did not present a sight to inspire the enthusiasm of the young Christian scholar and teacher. There was a wilderness of underbrush and forest growth cleared here and there in a torturous fashion, where an ambitious river street was trying to establish its way, and the settlement consisted of frame and log cabins. No school or church graced the life of the community, but the spirit of the young emigrant was soon made manifest. A Sunday-school was opened the month following his arrival, and in July a Methodist Episcopal Church was organized with seven members. The Sunday school was held in an unfinished building which could be procured for the day, the few teachers going around in the morning and informing the children where the meeting was to be held. The church was in an equally peripetetic condition, meeting by turns at the various hospitable homes of the settlement. Of the seven original members of that first church two survive; Mrs. Jacob Bumgardner and Mrs. James B. Hawley. A common school was soon established, he teaching in a little log cabin, and Oct.10,1840, saw the organization of the first temperance society of the territory.

In April, 1840, Mr. Parvin purchased the business and variety stock of Adam Ogilvie, and conducted a general store for four years. At the expiration of that time he sold out and entered upon the discharge of his first official duties. He was appointed Clerk of the District Court, and elected to that office in 1846, when Iowa became a State. In connection with the unrestricted duties of the office in those primitive days, and after retiring from the position, he occupied himself with civil engineering and surveying. While lying a victim of the cholera, which raged with fearful fatality in Muscatine County in 1850, Mr. Parvin was notified of his election on the Democratic ticket to the General Assembly of Iowa. While in attendance at that session he prepared and conducted to its final passage the bill making the town of Bloomington the city of Muscatine. It was also this strong Democratic Assembly that passed the first prohibitory law of the State, prohibiting the sale of intoxicating liquors, including wine and beer. In 1854, Mr. Parvin was nominated and elected as the Temperance candidate for Mayor of Muscatine, and by the last of July every saloon in the city was closed under that old Democratic law. Strange that modern Mayors find it so difficult, even when backed by a powerful police, to enforce respect and obedience to the laws of the State.

In the month of May,1855, Mr Parvin left the city, where he had done so much to promote the cause of temperance, education and religion, and moved to his country residence in Sweetland Township, three miles from the court-house, but he was not permitted to remain in his rural retirement. The following year he was elected to the Constitutional Convention, which met in 1857 and framed the present constitution of the State. He served as temporary chairman of the convention, and was appointed chairman of the important legislative committee. Among the provisions reported and carried through by him is the one providing for biennial sessions of the Assembly, and its meeting on the first of January. In 1863, while on a visit to New Jersey, Mr. Parvin was nominated as candidate for the Senate to fill a vacancy, and in 1865 was elected to the full term of four years. He regarded as the most important of the measures introduced by him the bill creating the Reform School, now known as the Industrial School of Iowa, established at Eldora. As before mentioned he served as one of the leading Trustees for over eighteen years. He also served on the committee for the location of that school and of the Orphan's Home.

After his retirement from the Senate, with the exception of being Trustee, Mr. Parvin lived in comparative retirement from public life. This sketch is but a brief outline of the career of one of Iowa's most illustrious citizens. It leaves out his genial and controlling influence in the social life of Muscatine, and it tells no story of his powerful instrumentality in the local organization of the Republican party, and it gives no hint of his voice heard throughout the community in the Fremont campaign, or of the critical canvasses in which he participated leading up to and including the historical issues of 1860; nor does it speak of his active, zealous labor for the Union during the perilous period of the Rebellion, but all these elements in his career are like household words to Muscatine County.

On the 27th day of May, 1866, Mr. Parvin wedded Miss Martha N. Williams, of Boston, Mass., a descendant of a very old New England family, whose founders emigrated from England about 1645. Her cultivated tastes, accomplishments and graces of character adorned with rare beauty the well-known home in Sweetland Township. In this charming companionship, and in the pleasures of a hospitality which delights in bringing "a troop of friends" about its hearth, Mr. Parvin was not permitted to live but a few short months, for the Angel of Death entered that peaceful home and carried away the loving husband. Letters of condolence were sent to the widow by her numerous friends, expressing their heartfelt sympathies for her bereavement, and all who knew Mr. Parvin were shocked by the sad intelligence of his death.


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