George S. Park

George Shepherd Park (October 28, 1811 – June 6, 1890) was a Texas War of Independence hero and founder of Parkville, Missouri,Park University and Manhattan, Kansas.

Park was born in Grafton, Vermont.

In 1835, he served under James Fannin in the Texas War of Independence. Park joined with Fannin's men at Refugio, Texas. More than 400 of Fannin's troops were killed by troops of Antonio López de Santa Anna in the Goliad Massacre and Park was one of the few survivors.

In 1836, he moved to Jackson County, Missouri, where he taught school. Following the Platte Purchase, in which Native Americans sold what is today northwest Missouri in 1838, Park took on a 99-year-lease on a steamboat landing site, English Landing, in the purchase area building a home on the bluffs above the Missouri River and platted the town of Parkville which he formally platted in 1844.

In 1845 he organized the Parkville Presbyterian Church. In 1853 he started the Industrial Luminary, a newspaper some believed to abolitionist. Park, however, owned slaves and termed the newspaper pro-commerce. Park generally believed that slavery in Kansas would be bad for business there.

In 1854 while leading a trip up the Kansas River, he established the town of Polistra near the mouth of the Big Blue River.

Park's newspaper was raided by a pro-slavery mob on April 14, 1855, and the printing press was thrown in the Missouri River. Park was in Polistra at the time closing a deal to turn over the town into a newly named Boston, Kansas to be run members by members of abolitionist New England Emigrant Aid Company (who in turn would rename it Manhattan). The Parkville Luminary, a newspaper based on the original Luminary, began publishing again in 2004. The newspaper's first issue contained unpublished letters from Park's last issue and frequently reprints Park's own editorials from the original Luminary.

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