Reverend George Melville Park was born in Dixfield, Oxford County, Maine. He was the son of Isaac and Emeline Smith Park. His father was a schoolmate and intimate friend and supporter of his boyhood friend Hannibal Hamlin, Vice-president to Abe Lincoln. Rev. Park’s mother was the daughter of Capt, John Smith of Readfield. Mr. Park was educated in his native town, with Eugene Hale and Judge Wm. Wirt Virgin among his teachers.
In 1864, George Park volunteered for service in the Civil War, training for three months as first Lieutenant at Fort Lincoln. He was discharged on account of his health, and then served as a member of the Christian Commission, in Washington, D.C. being stationed at Harwood Hospital on Harwood Plantation.
Park graduated from Maine State Seminary, now Bates College, in 1867. He was one of the 17 who petitioned that the Trustees change the Seminary to a college. Commencing when 18 years of age, Park became a teacher, a profession which he followed for 10 years.
Park entered Bangor Theological Seminary where he studied one year, then went to the New Hampshire Free Baptist Theological School from which he graduated in 1869. Before graduating from this school, Park accepted a position in Gilford, N.H. As there was a revival of much interest, resulting in 75 conversions at this time, Park felt obliged to accept the call to become their pastor. While preaching at the Free Baptist Church in Gilford, he was supervisor of schools, in addition to his church work. During his four years in the town, 90 members were added to the church, two of the number became ministers, one of which preached over 40 years.
Park was called to the pastorate of the Free Baptist Church at Farmington, N.H., a shoe manufacturing town full of young people. There he remained for four years. This was one of the best churches he was ever pastor of, adding 160 to its membership, also enlarging the church edifice, frescoing and putting in a pipe organ and other improvements, extending over $10,000 in improvements.
Rev. Park claimed that this was one of the most successful and best working churches in which he had ever served. If in the Sunday evening service, which was always a social service, only 60 or near that attended, then it was considered a poor meeting. Sometimes as many as 70 and 80 took part in the service, and singing from 250 voices there in attendance has never been forgotten. From this church, three of its members entered the ministry.
While in Farmington, Mr. Park served the town as a supervisor of schools for three years. While pastor of this church, Mr. Park received a call to the pastorate of the Boston church. Mr. Park’s acceptance was to the regret and disappointment of many, and as Rev. Park recalled, perhaps it was a mistake.
Mr. Park’s next pastorate was in Manchester, N.H., the largest city in the state. The church building had a seating capacity of 540, yet only had a congregation of 100 and a Sabbath school of 60 members. The church had a debt of $11,000 yet to pay. A forbidding outlook no one will deny! Rev. Park served the Marrimack Street Free Baptist Church in Manchester for nearly six years.
In 1879, Rev. Park was called to Aroostook County and commenced work with the Fort Fairfield, Presque Isle and Sprague’s Mills churches the first Sunday in 1880. He served as pastor of the Free Baptist Church at Sprague’s Mills (Easton) for fourteen and a half years. Park was instrumental in promoting the building of the original edifice of the Free Baptist Church in Presque Isle, and in connection with his evangelical and missionary work in the county, in towns north of Littleton, he succeeded in bringing about the building of about a dozen churches in different localities.
Mr. Park’s religious and church life during his active ministry, was most fruitful of benefit to the people within the scope of his activities and was sufficient to entitle him to take high rank as a benefactor of his community. But his work for the public good was by no means confined within the limits of the church. His life overflowed into the community outside his church, and his abounding energy, zeal and enthusiasm for the public interest made itself felt in numerous channels. Park took the initiative and threw himself with characteristic ardor, into plans large and small which took to the welfare of his fellow townsmen. The greatest zest and satisfaction of his life was in promoting educational, industrial and civic movements and enterprises related to the progress and prosperity of his community.
Above everything else, George M. Park was loyal to his town and county, proud of their progress and resources, and he never lost an opportunity to speak in their praise and to champion their interest. In fact, Park lived a life almost wholly outside of self-interest or self ambition.
During the 50 years covered by his active career, it would seem that almost all of his thoughts and all of his energies were enlisted in public movements and enterprises to which he was attracted and the various worthy causes he espoused. When Park had completed his self-sacrificing causes, there was not much of a dividend of personal profit, especially in a financial sense. Thus his accumulations were small in individual wealth but were great in achievements which enriched the community, as a result of his initiative and his persistent and tireless labor.
Let us enumerate some of the larger material benefits this man has left as a legacy to us. Making no attempt to mention them in chronological order, there comes to mind the Baptist church edifice in this village of Presque Isle; the splendid plant of the Aroostook State Normal School, the original Training School buildings on Academy Street, and the planting of the Aroostook Central Institute in Mars Hill and Blaine.
Many have forgotten the sequence of events which led up to the acquisition by our county of a State Normal School, and the selection of Presque Isle as its location. A few are intimately acquainted with the development of this project, and are aware that it originated in the fertile brain of Mr. Park.
The idea was nursed by him as a hobby, sometimes to his friends a tiresome hobby, for some years before it existed any general public interest or enthusiasm, or the serious efforts of anyone in the community outside of its author.
With such a record in a material way in behalf of education, it would naturally follow that he was active in other ways in speaking and working for this cause. This was the case, and if the record is investigated it will be found that Rev. Park took a large part in shaping and directing the activities of the schools and in influencing for good the educational life of the community. He was for a long time a member of the school board, and served a number of years as Supervisor, being so employed for a period of about 18 years. In the annual town meeting, his voice was always raised on behalf of all progressive measures involving this vital interest of the town.
In nearly all of his work for the public, Park either worked for nothing or the pay was nominal. An exception was the office of tax collector, which he filled in the 1890s. Being a paid office and a severely practical one, it was not to Mr. Park’s taste, and he did not shine to good advantage in it as he did in work that called for vision, enthusiasm and good public spirit. He was essentially an agitator in the better sense of the term.
On account of his influence as member of Pomona Grange, George Park was one of the best helpers that the late Albert Burleigh had when the latter was striving to enlist the cooperation of the Grange in the effort to secure a favorable vote of the county to lend its aid to the Bangor & Aroostook Railroad project. Park also proved of great assistance to Mr. A.R. Gould when the latter was seeking to secure the assistance of the town in the Aroostook Valley Railroad project.
Rev. Park was for many decades deeply interested and very active in furthering the interests of the Northern Maine Fair and was at one time President of the Fair Association. Among other contributions Park made to the “Fair” was the feature known as the “Calvacade”, which has added much spectacular interest to the last day of the annual festivals.
No doubt Mr. Park became more widely and affectionately known in the lay territory wherein he labored, through his relations as a pastor than in any other of his varied activities. He was called upon to shepard and minister to a very large and widely scattered flock, and in that large flock, he entered into the tender relations of home and kindred as no other minister of our county has probable even been privileged to do.
In the course of his long ministry, Rev. Park spoke the last words of comfort and consolation in thousands of bereaved homes. His funeral sermons, if reported and published would make a small library, and these sermons were imbued with the spirit of real and tender sympathy. He also similarly officiated at thousands of weddings which gladdened the homes of his flock and if the couples he thus joined in wedlock and their progeny could assemble in a procession, we do not know how far it would stretch out in length.
Mr. Park was thrice married. His first wife was Isadore Hawes of Readfield, who died in 1880. His second wife was Frances DeWitt of Presque Isle. Of this union there were born the following children: Mrs. Fern O’Connell of Presque Isle (1888-1966); Faye DeWitt Park (1883-1894); Clinton DeWitt Park (1885-1972); John Bird Finch Park (1887-1954); Evelyn Park Pusey (1892-1927); and Frances Park Allen of St. Petersburg, Fla. (1894-1994). For his third wife, Rev. Park married Elizabeth Marshall of Boston.
Sorely afflicted by years of painful invalidism, which for a long period before his death rendered him almost helpless, George Park was blessed by receiving tender and patient care, which it is the good fortune of few to have given to them under like circumstances.
And so ended a great life of a great man on Nov. 29, 1928 in Presque Isle, Maine, the town of his choice for 52 years.
Editor’s note: Information and photographs on Rev. G.M. Park was provided by his grandson, Lawrence “Larry” Park of Presque Isle, who together with his children and grand-children are carrying forward the proud and productive Park heritage.
Photo courtesy Larry Park
FUTURE AIR BASE — The United States government purchased land in the early 1940s to build what would become the Presque Isle Army Airfield and later Presque Isle Air Force Base. Working the land prior to conversion were farmer J. Finch Park and his crews. In the distance on the neighboring Roy Brown farm is a large tree, the remnants of which can be viewed today in the Air Museum at the Northern Maine Regional Airport.
Photos courtesy Larry Park
MOBILE HOME? — In order to make way for the Aroostook State Normal School (today UM-Presque Isle), the G.M. Park homestead, right, was moved crosstown. Today Park Hall sits on the fromer footprint of Park’s home. Ironically, Park’s second home and farm also had to be relocated when the United States decided the property and surrounding land would make a great military base. Park, below left, was determined to make his community and central Aroostook a center for education, community and spiritual excellence.
The Rev. Geroge M. Park
