Samuel Breck Parkman.

SAMUEL BRECK PARKMAN, son of Samuel Breck Parkman, was born on the Sand-hills, near Augusta, Ga., the summer residence of his father, 1 November, 1836.

His father, a cotton merchant of Savannah, and for several years and at the time of his death president of the Marine Bank at Savannah, was, with his three eldest daughters and eldest son, lost in the steamer "Pulaski," between Savannah and New York, 14 June, 1838. Breck had been left, with two sisters, under the care of his maiden aunt, who ever after took the place of a loving mother to the little orphans.

When still very young he was brought to the North and placed at Mr. Maurice's school, at Sing Sing on the Hudson, where he continued till he went to Cambridge. He was tutored by Mr. Felton for a year before entering College. After graduating, he read law in Savannah, and was admitted to practice in due time. He became a member of the Georgia Historical Society, and soon after joined the Savannah troop of cavalry. In the summer of 1860, he was in Europe, and spent some time in Switzerland with Dyer, F. C. Ropes, and Sowdon; he returned in the fall, visited Boston, and there dined with some members of the Class.

In January, 1861, he married Nannie Beirne, youngest daughter of Oliver Beirne, of Western Virginia.

He probably entered the service of the Confederate States as first (some say third) lieutenant in Read's Georgia Battery; and he was reported as such at the time of his death.¹ His sister, the wife of Professor W. P. Trowbridge, of New Haven, says, he was “below Richmond, under General Magruder, in infantry Company K, of MacLaws' Division. He was promoted, with the rest of the company, to a battery for meritorious conduct. From May to the latter part of August, he was around Richmond, under fire, but not in any fight, being in the reserve at Harper's Ferry and at Sharpsburg.” Elliott, in a letter to Brown, under date of 30 September, 1865, says, “Breck Parkman was killed at Sharpsburg, on the 17th of September, 1862. He was lieutenant in a Savannah battery, was riding in the rear of the battery, which was engaged at the time, when he was struck down by a small ball from a spherical case which exploded near it, entered the right shoulder, and passed through the heart. No one saw him fall; but he was found a moment after, dead. His remains were afterward taken up, and are now in the Beirne vault at Richmond.” A year or two after, his body was removed to Laurel Grove Cemetery, Savannah, where a monument marks his final resting-place.

After six years of widowhood, Mrs. Parkman married the Baron Emil von Ahlefeldt, of Schleswig Holstein. In April, 1882, the Baroness von Ahlefeldt was in New York, her first visit since 1872, accompanied by her husband. He died in June, 1882.

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1 New Orleans (La.) "Delta," September, 1862. See also Brown's letter to the Class Secretary from Sharpsburg, Md., giving the testimony of a Confederate captain.

SOURCE: McKean Folsom and Francis Henry Brown, Report of the Class of 1857 in Harvard College: Prepared for the Twenty-fifth Anniversary of its Graduation, p. 96-7