The Parsons

Samuel Parsons (1774-1841)

Samuel Parsons joined the Bowne family of Flushing when he married  Mary Bowne in 1806.  Samuel was a Quaker minister and a farmer.  Samuel and Mary owned property near the 1661 Bowne homestead to the north and east of Bowne House. Samuel acquired trees  and shrubs  with the intention of establishing a nursery to pass on to his sons upon his death. That land became the well-known Parsons Nursery.

Samuel refused to own slaves and served as clerk of the New York Meeting. In 1834, he wrote a letter to a Joseph Talcott advising that the New York Meeting had raised over $1000 dollars to move up north free Southern blacks who were being threatened with a return to slavery. Samuel also signed as clerk a long denunciation of slavery issued by the New York Yearly Meeting in June 1837.He wrote about his anti-slavery views in his letters and had friends and colleagues who were abolitionists

Mary (Bowne) Parsons (1784-1839)

Mary Bowne, great-great-granddaughter of John Bowne, inherited the Bowne House along with her mother and sisters following the death of her father John Bowne IV (1742-1804.) In 1806 Mary married Samuel Parsons, a Quaker minister from a Manhattan merchant family, beginning the era of the Bowne/Parsons family. As none of Mary’s sisters married, her marriage to Samuel ensured that ownership of the Bowne House would one day pass to the Parsons. Their children were James Bowne Parsons, Mary Bowne Parsons Jr., Samuel Bowne Parsons, Robert Bowne Parsons, William Bowne Parsons, and Jane Parsons. 

The couple were known as ardent abolitionists, and they instilled these beliefs in their children, at least three of whom later became conductors on the Underground Railroad. Mary also served as an elder in the Quaker Meeting, taking a special interest in religious education for youth. Mary died of consumption, or tuberculosis, in 1838, after a voyage to the Caribbean Island of St. Croix failed to restore her health.

Samuel Bowne Parsons, Sr. (1819-1906), Robert Bowne Parsons (1821-1898), and William Bowne Parsons (1823-1856)

Samuel Parsons, Sr. claimed to have established the  Parsons Nursery in 1838-40, according to an entry in his journal. He refers to borrowing $5,000 from a bank, a large sum at the time,  to start the business with his brother Robert B. Parsons.  Another brother William B. Parsons is listed as a horticulturist in an 1850 census.

Flushing at that time was a flourishing center for horticulture. Several world famous nurseries were located there-Price, Bloodgood, Hicks. Samuel Bowne Parsons, Sr. traveled extensively to find rare plant materials for the nursery. Among his specialties were the pink-flowering dogwood, the Japanese maple, hardy rhododendrons, azaleas, fruit trees, and roses. In 1847, he brought back an oddity, the European Weeping Beech, in a small flowerpot. This became the legendary weeping beech which survived on 37th Avenue, Flushing, until the mid-20th century. Some notable plant specimens, like the Japanese maple, survive at the Bowne House and may be enjoyed by visitors today. 

These three Parsons brothers have been documented as actively involved in the New York Underground Railroad from at least 1842-1850 in providing assistance to freedom seekers such as fugitive slaves by raising funds and acting as conductors to help harbor them in their Flushing neighborhood during flight.

Samuel Parsons, Jr. (1844-1923)

Samuel Parsons Jr., son of Samuel Bowne Parsons, Sr. and Susan Howland Parsons, inherited his father’s love of horticulture. His work as a landscape architect was seen and enjoyed in the public parks and private gardens of more than twenty states. For fifteen years, he worked in partnership with Calvert Vaux, one of the original designers along with Frederick Olmsted of New York’s Central Park, and served as Superintendent of Plantings of the Parks Department, chief Landscape Architect, and Superintendant of the Parks Department. He was also president of the American Society of Landscape Architects, and landscape architect for the American Society for the Preservation of Scenic and Historical Places and Objects.

Notable works done by him include Washington Park (he was appointed by an Act of Congress to the post in 1900), San Diego Park, a 60 acre park on Biltmore Estate in Ashville, N.C., Haverford and Bryn Mawr colleges, and Colorado State University grounds and campus. As landscape architect for Greater New York (Commissioner of Parks), he supervised over 100 city parks of varying sizes, controlling every aspect of the parks such as siting of paths, lawns, buildings, statues, and plantings. Parsons and Co. also designed the grounds of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine as well as of five churches of the Episcopal Corporation and planned the planting of trees on the Park Avenue medians above 59th St. Parsons and Co. also designed a number of important private gardens, many of which survived and can be seen today.