Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/1172

1096 continued. He has also done beneficent work as the organizer of the Richmond home for ladies, and president of the Male orphan asylum, the Magnum asylum and the Foundling hospital. He is an honorary member of Pickett camp, Confederate Veterans.

Marshall Parks, one of the most distinguished citizens of southeastern Virginia, was born in Norfolk, November 8, 1820. He is the son of Marshall Parks, a native of Cambridge, Mass., who came to Norfolk in early manhood and married Martha Boush, a member of one of Norfolk's historic families. The elder Parks was the owner of a large number of steamboats and other craft, plying in the vicinity of Norfolk, was the founder and owner of the famous Hygeia hotel at Old Point Comfort, and was the rebuilder of the Dismal Swamp canal, the granite locks of which are an enduring monument to his memory. He died in 1840. The son, Marshall Parks, left school at New Haven, Conn., at the age of fifteen years, and during the next five years was associated with his father's enterprises, and in establishing the South mills, on the canal, in North Carolina, where the senior Parks and John Tabb owned large grist and lumber mills. While there he was the first postmaster of the town, and having previously had military experience, was a major in the Second North Carolina regiment and declined promotion to brigadier-general on account of his being under age, and about to leave the State. He had been reared, it might almost be said, upon steamboats, and he was thoroughly familiar with their management and with the navigable waters near Norfolk. After his father's death he built an iron steamer in New York which he named the Albemarle. In 1842, though not a naval officer, he was given command of the steamboat Germ, the first to be run on an inland course from the Atlantic to the great lakes. This boat had horizontal wheels and was built at the Norfolk navy yard by the national government. The trip was made to exhibit this new mode of propelling, which was thought best for war vessels. Mr. Parks took the boat up Chesapeake bay, through the Chesapeake & Delaware canal, the Delaware river, the Delaware and Raritan canal, the Raritan river to New York and Hudson river to Albany, and the Erie canal to Oswego on Lake Ontario. This was the first trip of a steamer from the Atlantic to the lakes. Captain Parks examined the upper Roanoke and Dan rivers for the purpose of using steam on those rivers. His plan was an entirely original one, but he failed to get capital to assist him and therefore abandoned it. He subsequently proposed a plan for a ferryboat to carry railroad cars from Portsmouth to Norfolk, across Elizabeth river, and the city council of Norfolk appropriated money for the purpose and appointed him superintendent of construction. He was entirely successful, procuring the building of the Princess Anne at Wilmington, Del., and established the city ferry. As he was desirous of steamship communication with New York, a friend purchased for that purpose, just after the Mexican war, the U. S. steamship Spitfire. On his first trip he encountered a heavy gale, and having lost his smokestack, put into the capes of the Delaware and proceeded to Wilmington for repairs, after which he went on to New York, and sold the boat at a large profit, it being found that the war vessel was not suitable for mercantile purposes. Many of his steamboat