Los Angeles County, CA, Biographies

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PROFESSOR M. M. PARKER, 
 
President of the Pasadena City Council, and Principal of the Pasadena Academy, 
was born in Franklin County, Maine, November 27, 1849; educated at the Maine 
Wesleyan Seminary, and also at the Wesleyan University at Middletown, 
Connecticut, where he graduated in 1875. Soon afterward he became principal of 
the Glastonbury (Connecticut) Academy, where he established a reputation in his 
profession that caused boards of education elsewhere to apply for his services 
as teacher. Removing to the eastern part of the State of Massachusetts in 1878, 
he was engaged in his profession as teacher there until near the close of 1882, 
when he removed to Pasadena.  Though in feeble health at that time, he took a 
lively interest in the welfare of the colony, and made a careful study of the 
social, educational
and economic problems that arose in that growing and ambitious community. To 
this study, as well as to his native talent, is due the sagacity he has 
exhibited in his public career. He has been signally efficient in giving 
direction to municipal policy and local enterprise. This management has of 
course tended toward the healthy development of the city. Such development is 
attended with neither penuriousness on the one hand, nor extravagance on the 
other, for either of these retards the wheels of progress. He is one of those 
who have contributed most in making Pasadena what she is to day�a beautiful, 
thrifty, orderly city. A thorough believer in American ideas in regard to the 
right of the majority to rule in civil affairs, he has sought to carry out the 
expressed wish of the people that saloons should be excluded from the city, as 
also the wishes of the community in all that pertains to its welfare. As an 
evidence of the confidence which is placed in him, it may be stated that, after 
serving one full term, he was re-elected at the last municipal election, 
receiving virtually the entire vote cast. But the most valuable service which 
Mr. Parker has rendered, for which he is likely to be longest remembered, is the 
establishment of the academy. Early discerning the need of the community for an 
institution of learning to supplement the public schools, he resolved to found 
an academy as a preparatory school for college. Accordingly, he opened such a 
school in 1886, which has ever since been in successful operation, although many 
obstacles have been encountered. With its departments well defined, with 
competent teachers, and with an earnest and diligent body of students, the 
academy is second to none in the essentials of a first-class preparatory school.
 
An Illustrated History of Los Angeles County, California �  Chicago, The Lewis 
Publishing Company, 1889   Page 601
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler