John Rockey Park (May 7, 1833 – September 29, 1900) was a prominent educator in the

Territory A territory is an area of land, sea, or space, particularly belonging or connected to a country, person, or animal. In international politics, a territory is usually either the total area from which a state may extract power resources or a ...

and

State of Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to its we ...

in the late 19th century, and in many ways was the intellectual father of the

University of Utah The University of Utah (U of U, UofU, or simply The U) is a public research university in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is the flagship institution of the Utah System of Higher Education. The university was established in 1850 as the University of De ...

Educating "intelligent, industrious and moral" citizens

There is a statue of John Rockey Park in an alcove just to the left of the west (front) entrance to the University of Utah main administration building which bears his name. There is a plaque fixed to the base of the statue. The plaque lists biographical dates and statistics from Park's life and career, and then repeats the following quote from an 1885 speech he gave to future

teacher A teacher, also called a schoolteacher or formally an educator, is a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence, or virtue, via the practice of teaching. ''Informally'' the role of teacher may be taken on by anyone (e.g. whe ...

I would have you remember that the best intellectual ability ... will result in worse than failure, unless it has underlying it a stratum of moral culture. ... Always remember in your teaching that the grand purpose of your labors is to make citizens—active,
thinking In their most common sense, the terms thought and thinking refer to conscious cognitive processes that can happen independently of sensory stimulation. Their most paradigmatic forms are judging, reasoning, concept formation, problem solving, an ...
, intelligent, industrious and moral men and women. This you cannot do by any narrow routine of school forms. —Address to
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Graduates, Class of 1885

Childhood, education and early career (1833–1860)

Park was born in

Tiffin, Ohio Tiffin is a city in and the county seat of Seneca County, Ohio, United States. Developed along the Sandusky River, which flows to Lake Erie, Tiffin is about 55 miles southeast of Toledo. The population was 17,963 at the 2010 census. and attended Tiffin's public school. From 1848 to 1850, Park was a student at the Seneca County Academy in the nearby town of Republic, Ohio. While Park studied at the academy, he was fortunate to associate with and learn from Thomas W. Harvey, the academy's principal. Harvey went on to write a number of grammar books, and he became a rather well-known figure in Ohio education history. He was one of several gifted teachers who would have an influence on Park, and by extension, on all of the students Park would teach in his own career as a teacher and teacher trainer. After completing his preparatory studies, Park went on to graduate from Ohio Wesleyan University. Jenson, ''

Latter-Day Saint Biographical Encyclopedia ''Latter-day Saint Biographical Encyclopedia: A Compilation of Biographical Sketches of Prominent Men and Women in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints'' (abbreviated ''LDS Biographical Encyclopedia'') is a four-volume biographical dic ...

'', vol. 1, p. 785. From 1853 to 1855, Park was employed as a teacher for the first time; he taught at the academy in Republic where he had attended classes as a student.

Chamberlin The Chamberlin is an electro-mechanical keyboard instrument that was a precursor to the Mellotron. It was developed and patented by the American inventor Harry Chamberlin from 1949 to 1956, when the first model was introduced. There are several ...

"''Memories of John R. Park''"
p. 11 In 1855, Park entered medical school at

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, th ...

where he was a student of the

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historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the st ...

and philosopher, John William Draper. In later life, Park would "gratefully acknowledge" the positive influence that Draper's teaching and friendship had on his life. In 1857, Park received his MD, and he began practicing medicine that same year. By 1860, Park had decided to leave the practice of medicine. Instead, he ventured out west where (initially at least) he would not always find employment as a teacher.

Education in Deseret / Utah Territory prior to Park's arrival (1847–1861)

In July 1847, fourteen years before Park's arrival,

Brigham Young Brigham Young (; June 1, 1801August 29, 1877) was an American religious leader and politician. He was the second president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), from 1847 until his death in 1877. During his time as ch ...

and the first large group of Mormon pioneers arrived in the area which now comprises the state of

Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to it ...

. In 1849, Young submitted a fairly bold proposal to the U.S. Congress, asking that a large portion of the land which had been

ceded The act of cession is the assignment of property to another entity. In international law it commonly refers to land transferred by treaty. Ballentine's Law Dictionary defines cession as "a surrender; a giving up; a relinquishment of jurisdictio ...

to the United States at the end of the

Mexican–American War The Mexican–American War, also known in the United States as the Mexican War and in Mexico as the (''United States intervention in Mexico''), was an armed conflict between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848. It followed the 1 ...

(1846–1848) be admitted to the Union as the

State of Deseret The State of Deseret (modern pronunciation , contemporaneously ) was a proposed state of the United States, proposed in 1849 by settlers from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) in Salt Lake City. The provisional stat ...

. At the time, Congress was consumed with an issue which would eventually only be resolved by the Civil War (1861–1865): whether

slavery Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

should be permitted to extend into the western territories. A year and a half after the State of Deseret was proposed, Congress passed the

Compromise of 1850 The Compromise of 1850 was a package of five separate bills passed by the United States Congress in September 1850 that defused a political confrontation between slave and free states on the status of territories acquired in the Mexican–Am ...

. The Compromise reduced the proposed state's borders, renamed it the

Utah Territory The Territory of Utah was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from September 9, 1850, until January 4, 1896, when the final extent of the territory was admitted to the Union as the State of Utah, the 45th state ...

, and specified that slavery would be permitted in the new territory if the inhabitants voted to permit it. Utah's Mormon settlers were very different from the " rugged individual"

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s who would pour into the American West before and after the Civil War. Mormon theology emphasized a kind of "mutual service

salvation Salvation (from Latin: ''salvatio'', from ''salva'', 'safe, saved') is the state of being saved or protected from harm or a dire situation. In religion and theology, ''salvation'' generally refers to the deliverance of the soul from sin and its ...

", and Mormon communities idealized mutual aid to such an extent that they attempted to implement a Christian collectivist economic system called the

United Order In the Latter Day Saint movement, the United Order (also called the United Order of Enoch) was one of several 19th-century church collectivist programs. Early versions of the Order beginning in 1831 attempted to fully implement the law of consecr ...

in the 1830s, very briefly in the 1850s, and again in the 1870s. Also, despite

federal Federal or foederal (archaic) may refer to: Politics General *Federal monarchy, a federation of monarchies *Federation, or ''Federal state'' (federal system), a type of government characterized by both a central (federal) government and states or ...

efforts to rigorously enforce

separation of church and state The separation of church and state is a philosophical and jurisprudential concept for defining political distance in the relationship between religious organizations and the state. Conceptually, the term refers to the creation of a secular sta ...

, the Utah territorial government retained some elements of a

theocracy Theocracy is a form of government in which one or more deities are recognized as supreme ruling authorities, giving divine guidance to human intermediaries who manage the government's daily affairs. Etymology The word theocracy originates fr ...

(or, as

Joseph Smith Joseph Smith Jr. (December 23, 1805June 27, 1844) was an American religious leader and founder of Mormonism and the Latter Day Saint movement. When he was 24, Smith published the Book of Mormon. By the time of his death, 14 years later, ...

had phrased it, a "

theodemocracy Theodemocracy is a theocratic political system proposed by Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. According to Smith, a theodemocracy is a fusion of traditional republican democratic principles—under the Un ...

"). Park's effectiveness as an educator would hinge on his ability to appreciate the benefits of, and to be accepted into, a community that was unique for its time and place. Education in Utah Territory was similarly shaped by the religious philosophy of its Mormon settlers. Mormons held that " e glory of God is intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth." Like their lax attitude toward separation of church and state, the Mormons did not make great efforts to distinguish between truth received from spiritual revelation or from empirical confirmation. In essence, they were willing to cross the Great Plains and the

Rocky Mountains The Rocky Mountains, also known as the Rockies, are a major mountain range and the largest mountain system in North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch in straight-line distance from the northernmost part of western Canada, to New Mexico ...

walking beside

covered wagon The covered wagon or prairie wagon, historically also referred to as an ambulance or prairie schooner, was a vehicle usually made out of wood and canvas that was used for transportation, prominently in 19th-century America. With roots in the he ...

s or pulling handcarts so that they could engage in a search for light and truth using methods that valued both secular truth ''and'' spiritual truth. Almost immediately after arriving in the Salt Lake Valley the Latter-day Saints began making plans to ensure that their children received the basics of a secular and religious

elementary education Primary education or elementary education is typically the first stage of formal education, coming after preschool/kindergarten and before secondary school. Primary education takes place in ''primary schools'', ''elementary schools'', or fir ...

. A few weeks after the first crops were planted in the mid-summer of 1847, a school was established. In 1848, Young sent an open letter to those who would soon be emigrating to "Zion", asking them to "improve every opportunity of securing at least a copy of every valuable treatise on education." During the 1850s, local LDS Church meeting houses typically served as schoolhouses for the community's children during the week, and the schools often used Mormon scriptures as supplemental texts. A territorial "Superintendent of Schools" position was created in 1851. However, as the settlers struggled with the realities of frontier life during the 1850s, there just weren't sufficient resources to ensure that schools throughout the Utah Territory taught to uniform standards. So, when Park arrived in 1861, the Territory's schools differed widely in the quality of education they offered. The settlers started planning for a

university A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States ...

almost as quickly as they laid the foundations of an elementary education system. The provisional State of Deseret's General Assembly—consisting of a Senate and a House of Representatives—met for the first time in January 1850. It took just another month or so for the Assembly to pass its eleventh official ordinance and create the University of Deseret (now the

) on February 28, 1850. The new school officially opened on November 11, 1850. The legislators and regents who founded the university intended for it to be the governing institution supervising all the schools in the proposed State of Deseret; this was a system which the Mormons had attempted to implement while settling Nauvoo, Illinois. The university was to serve primarily at first as a

normal school A normal school or normal college is an institution created to train teachers by educating them in the norms of pedagogy and curriculum. In the 19th century in the United States, instruction in normal schools was at the high school level, turni ...

, but its founders also believed that it would soon be a world-class learning institution. Unfortunately, in the early 1850s a significant portion of the Territory's economy was operating solely on

barter In trade, barter (derived from ''baretor'') is a system of exchange in which participants in a transaction directly exchange goods or services for other goods or services without using a medium of exchange, such as money. Economists disti ...

, and it quickly became apparent that the university would have to wait at least until there was sufficient money in the Territory for students to pay tuition and for the legislature to fund, and not just pass, appropriation bills. In early March 1852, Utah Territory's newly formed legislature rescinded the university's funding. By the time Park arrived in 1861, the university had been closed for almost a decade.

Frontier schoolteacher (1860–1869)

Park came to

in 1861 settling in

Draper Draper was originally a term for a retailer or wholesaler of cloth that was mainly for clothing. A draper may additionally operate as a cloth merchant or a haberdasher. History Drapers were an important trade guild during the medieval period, ...

. In 1862, he was baptized a member of

the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, informally known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church, is a nontrinitarian Christian church that considers itself to be the restoration of the original church founded by Jesus Christ. The ch ...

(LDS Church).

University president (1869–1892)

In 1869, Park became president of the

University of Deseret The University of Utah (U of U, UofU, or simply The U) is a public research university in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is the flagship institution of the Utah System of Higher Education. The university was established in 1850 as the University of D ...

, the predecessor of the University of Utah.

Community leader and State Superintendent of Public Instruction (1892–1900)

In 1895, Park was elected as Utah Superintendent of Education on the

Republican Republican can refer to: Political ideology * An advocate of a republic, a type of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship, and is usually associated with the rule of law. ** Republicanism, the ideology in support of republics or agains ...

ticket. He continued to serve in this position until 1900. He was succeeded by Emma McVicker.

Personal and family life

Park adopted several children as his own, but he never married.

Legacy

Upon his death in 1900, Park bequeathed his entire fortune, plus his library, to the University of Utah. The John R. Park Debate Society at the University of Utah holds his name. The Draper Park School, in Draper, Utah, near where Park taught school early in his career, is named after him, and is listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

. and

Notes

References

* * * * * * * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Park, John R. 1833 births 1900 deaths American Latter Day Saints Converts to Mormonism New York University Grossman School of Medicine alumni Ohio Wesleyan University alumni People from Draper, Utah People from Tiffin, Ohio Presidents of the University of Utah University of Utah faculty