Parker

Watercolor of Rutgers College by Theodore Doolittle ID 7 940x570.jpg

This is a watercolor of Old Queens, the first building of Rutgers University (then Queens College). It was built starting in 1808 on land donated by the Parker family of Perth Amboy.

James Parker was former delegate to Provincial Congress and an East Jersey proprietor. He died in 1797, but his son and widow donated five acres bounding Somerset, College, Hamilton, and George Streets in 1808 for the construction of Old Queens. This became the nucleus of Queens College (later known as Rutgers University). Parker’s occupation was a merchant in New York City. He, and later his estate and wife, owned slaves well into the 1820s. Below are links to records relating to Queens College's acquisition of that land, and various slave vital records relating to the Parker family.

Above are various records relating to slaves owned by the Parker family.