David Parsons II (1712-1781) was born in Malden, Massachusetts, the second of nine children born to the Reverend David and Sarah (Stebbins) Parsons. David, Jr. was 18 when he graduated from Harvard College in 1729 and received his M.A. in 1734. He began preaching in the third precinct of Hadley, Massachusetts, that would later become the town of Amherst in 1759. Perhaps put off by a low salary offer, he declined the invitation to be the official minister, choosing instead to preach in the towns of Southampton and Westfield, Massachusetts. Amherst succeeded, however, in convincing Parsons to settle there in 1739. Not long after, the newly ordained minister married Eunice Welles of Whethersfield, Connecticut. They would have nine children. (Clifford K. Shipton, Sibley's Harvard Graduates (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1951), Vol. VIII, pp. 610-613.)
David Parsons was an ardent and outspoken Loyalist which angered the Whig (Patriot) members of his congregation who favored first resistence to Great Britain and then independence. In 1777, the town voted that that their Tory minister’s conduct was offensive but did not go so far as to remove him or withhold his salary. The Reverend Parsons continued as the town minister until his death in 1781, aged 69, when his son, also named David, was ordained as the town's new minister. (Shipton, Sibley's Harvard Graduates, Vol. VIII, p. 614-615)
David Parson's wife Eunice came from a relatively well-to-do family, which may have provided the necessary funds to enslave a man called Pompey who was in the Parsons household with a wife, Rose, and a child named Guffy who was born in Amherst in 1748. Pompey was admitted to Church membership in 1758. Two years later, Pompey escaped from bondage. Parsons posted an advertisement and a "Three Dollars Reward" in a Boston newspaper for his capture and return:
"Ran away from his Master David Parsons of Amherst Hadley, a Negro Man named Pomp, about 26 Years of Age: A Fellow of the highest Stature, judged six Feet and a half High, has been long in the Country, can Read and Write, speaks good English." (Boston Post-Boy, 10 March 1760. For the entire text of the ad, see Antonio T. Bly, Ed., Escaping Slavery: A Documentary History of Runaway Slaves in Eighteenth-Century New England, 1700-1789 (Lexington Books, 2012), p. 141.)
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