Parrish Family Papers

Josiah Lamberson Parrish (1806-1895) was an early American missionary to the Indians, U.S. Indian agent and leader in Christian education in the Pacific northwest. He was born in Onondaga County, New York, on January 14, 1806. He learned the blacksmith trade from his father, and worked on the Erie Canal.

Parrish was converted in 1816 and renewed (?) in 1824 before being licensed to preach in 1830. Parrish heard the call to the Indian mission in Oregon in 1839. Jason Lee, the superintendent of the Indian mission, had already filled his quota of ministers, so Parrish entered the Indian mission as a blacksmith.

Parrish arrived in Oregon in 1840, having come by ship around Cape Horn. He served for two years as a blacksmith at the main mission station in the Willamette Valley, before he was given charge of his own station among the coast Indians in 1842.

From 1843 to 1846, Parrish was a missionary to the Clatsop Indians. After the close of the Indian Mission in 1846, he worked as a preacher among the white settlers, first as a lay preacher and later as a conference member in full connection. From 1847 to 1848 Parrish served the Yamhill circuit. In 1844 he became a trustee of Willamette University. Between 1849 and 1854, at a time when the government was trying to move the Indians of the Pacific northwest onto reservations, Parrish was a government Indian agent.

Parrish was interested in public affairs, and helped establish the provisional government of Oregon, which was the only government in Oregon until the United States Government established the Oregon territorial government in 1846.

Parrish was admitted to the Oregon Conference in 1853 and ordained elder by Bishop Ames. Parrish was one of the first men in the Oregon Conference to be ordained elder. In 1854, Parrish returned to missionary work on the Grande Ronde Indian reservation, but retired for health reasons in 1856.

In 1857, Parrish returned to active service and was active until 1879.

Though he spent a lot of time with the Native American people on the reservations, Parrish maintained a home on his Donation Land Claim, land used for homesteading in Oregon, in what is now the city of Salem.

After his retirement, Parrish served for sixteen years as a prison chaplain at the state prison. He was an original member of the board of directors of the Oregon Institute, which was chartered as Willamette University in 1853, and remained a member of the board for the rest of his life. In fact Parrish was elected president of the board of trustees of Willamette University in 1869.

Parrish was married three times.

He married Elizabeth Winn in 1833, and had four children with her, all boys - Lamberson, Norman, Samuel, and Charles. Elizabeth Winn Parrish died in 1859.

In 1860, Parrish married Jennie L. Lichtenthaler, by whom he had two children, both girls - Josie and Grace. Jennie died in 1887.

The next year, 1888 Parrish married Mattie A. Pierce, who had one child, LaRonda Pierce, from a previous marriage.