Reverend Samuel Parris (Upham map # "149")

Born in 1653 to the London merchant Thomas Parris, Samuel Parris was sent to Boston to attend Harvard College some time after Thomas moved to the Barbados. Upon the death of Thomas in 1673, Samuel left the school for the West Indies to take up a mercantile profession on inherited land. By 1680, after finding little economic advantage in the Barbados, Parris returned to Boston, and while continuing there as a merchant for several years, he decided to pursue the ministry at a time when Salem Village was looking for a new pastor. Tenaciously attempting to keep his position following the 1692 witchcraft era, Parris finally succumbed to the pressures of his enemies and quit the village pulpit in 1696. Pursuing occupations of minister, teacher, and retailer in several different communities, Parris died in Sudbury in 1720. (Richard Trask, The Devil Hath Been Raised, 1997, p. 128.)