Charles Henry Parkhurst

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Charles Henry Parkhurst (April 17, 1842 – September 8, 1933) was an American clergyman and social reformer born in Framingham, Massachusetts. A quiet, scholarly man, he became a public figure in New York City after delivering two sermons in 1892 that attacked political corruption in the city government.

He gathered evidence to back up his claims and, with his friend John Erving, went onto the streets in disguise to collect proof of corruption. From the pulpit on March 13, 1892, he preached a sermon backed by affidavits and documents. Parkhurst’s campaign helped spur the Lexow Committee to investigate conditions and contributed to the election of a reform mayor in 1894. While Tammany Hall tried to reform, it remained influential for decades afterward.

Parkhurst was born on a farm and did not attend formal school until he was twelve, but he was drawn to education. He graduated from Amherst College in 1866 and became principal of Amherst High School in 1867. He studied theology at Halle in 1869, taught at Williston Seminary in Easthampton (1870–1871), and pursued further studies in Leipzig (1872–1873) before being ordained as a Presbyterian minister. He served as pastor of a Congregational church in Lenox, Massachusetts (1874–1880) and then at the Madison Square Presbyterian Church in New York City (1880–1918). He was elected president of the New York Society for the Prevention of Crime in 1891.

Parkhurst married Ellen Bodman in 1870; she died in 1921. He later married Eleanor Marx in 1927. He died on September 8, 1933, in Ventnor City, New Jersey, after sleepwalking off his porch roof.

Parkhurst also opposed women’s suffrage, expressing a belief that the movement carried risks and inappropriate behavior.