Andrew Parsons
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Andrew Parsons (July 22, 1817–June 6, 1855) was a politician from the U.S. state of Michigan.
Parsons was born in Hoosick, New York. He was the son of John Parsons, and the grandson of Andrew Parsons, a Revolutionary soldier, who as the son of Phineas Parsons, the son of Samuel Parsons, a descendant of Walter Parsons, born in Ireland in 1290.
Parsons moved to Michigan Territory in 1835 and spent the summer teaching in Ann Arbor. In the fall, he explored nearly the entire length of the Grand River valley by canoe, from Jackson to Lake Michigan. He spent the winter working as a store clerk in Ionia County and in the spring went to Marshall, Michigan to live with his brother, Luke H. Parsons. In the fall of 1836, he moved to Corunna, Michigan in what was to become Shiawassee County. This area at that time was mostly wilderness, and when it was organized into a county in 1837, Parsons was elected the county's first clerk at the age of nineteen.
Parsons became an attorney, and in 1840 was elected Register of Deeds, and reelected in 1842 and 1844. In 1846, he was elected to the State Senate and was appointed Prosecuting Attorney in 1848. He became a Regent of the University of Michigan in 1851 and was also elected as Lieutenant Governor. He became acting Governor when Robert McClelland resigned in March 1853 to become the Secretary of the Interior under U.S. President Franklin Pierce.
Parsons did not receive the Democratic Party's nomination for governor in 1854, at least partly because the party was split by question of slavery and by the formation of the Republican Party (which held its first convention that year in Jackson, Michigan). Instead, Parsons was elected to the state legislature from Shiawassee County. He fell ill in 1855 and returned to Corunna where he died on June 6. He is interred at Pinetree Cemetery in Corunna.
External links
- Biographical Portrait (http://www.usgennet.org/usa/mi/county/tuscola/book/book133-139.htm) 1892 Portrait & Biographical Album of Genesee, Lapeer & Tuscola Counties, Chapman Bros.