Virgil Delphine Parris, Congressman, President of the Maine Senate, acting Governor and United States Marshall for the District of Maine, was born in Buckfield on February 18, 1807, the son and grandson of Revolutionary War veterans.
A graduate of Hebron Academy and Union College in New York he studied law in Massachusetts and in Portland before being admitted to the Oxford Bar in 1830.
He opened a practice of law in his native Buckfield in the same year and immediately turned his attention to politics, in the practice of which he would remain an ardent Jacksonian Democrat.
In 1832 he was elected to represent Buckfield in the Maine Legislature and was reelected to that post for the next five years.
1838 to 1842 he was a Representative from Maine to the Twenty-fifth and Twenty-sixth United States Congresses, and in 1842 and 1843 he represented Oxford County in the Maine Senate serving as President of the Senate in 1843.
During his tenure, he, like so many other of the early Senate Presidents, served for a short time as acting Governor.
From 1844 to 1848 he was the United States Marshall for the District of Maine, giving up good potential prospects of becoming Governor on his own right to accept the post.
In the early 1850’s Parris moved his family to Paris Hill where he resided until his death in 1874.
He held several other federally appointive posts until his party was voted out of office in 1861.
Ruggedly handsome, strong of conviction and a born leader, Virgil Parris was also a promoter and developer, becoming the originator and first President of the Buckfield Branch Railroad.