His admission inside a ceremonial courtroom in Buffalo, 130 years after his death, followed a yearslong effort by his descendants. They saw bitter irony in the fact that an important figure in U.S. history was never recognized as a U.S. citizen—a requirement at the time to practice law.
“Today, we correct that injustice,” said Melissa Parker Leonard, a great-great-great-grandniece of Ely Parker, addressing an audience that included robed judges from several New York courts. “We acknowledge that the failure was never his. It was the law itself.”
Parker was at General Ulysses S. Grant’s side during General Robert E. Lee’s 1865 surrender at the Appomattox, Virginia, courthouse. He was tasked with writing out the final terms that the generals signed. Later, Grant chose Parker, by then a brigadier general, to be commissioner of Indian Affairs, making him the first Native American to serve in that position.
He is also the first Native American to be posthumously admitted to the bar, said retired Judge John Browning, who worked on the application. “Even a cursory review of his biography will show that Mr. Parker was not only clearly qualified for admission to the bar, but he in fact exemplified the best and highest ideals of the legal profession that the bar represents,” said Judge Gerald Whalen, the presiding justice of the 4th Appellate Division, before finalizing the admission.
Born in 1828 on the Seneca Nation of Indians’ Tonawanda reservation outside Buffalo, Parker was educated at a Baptist mission school. There, he went by Ely Samuel Parker instead of his Seneca name, Hasanoanda, and later studied law at a firm in Ellicottville, New York.
At the time, his admission to the bar was denied because only natural-born or naturalized citizens could be admitted. Native Americans were not granted U.S. citizenship until 1924.
“Today is Ely’s triumph, but it is also all of ours, too,” said Lee Redeye, deputy counsel for the Seneca Nation of Indians. “For we stand victorious over the prejudice of the past.”
Unable to practice law, Parker became a civil engineer but continued to use his legal training to help the Seneca defend their land. He partnered with attorney John Martindale to secure victories in the New York Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Despite his legal contributions, Parker is most widely recognized for his Civil War service, initially serving as Grant’s military secretary. The two men had met and become friends in Galena, Illinois, where Grant had a home and Parker, then an engineer for the U.S. Treasury Department, was supervising construction of a federal building.
Parker died in 1895 and is buried in Buffalo’s Forest Lawn Cemetery.
“This moment is deeply personal for our family. It allows Ely to rest in the knowledge that he did his best,” Leonard said on Friday, “and that his best changed the course of our history.”
https://fortune.com/2025/11/15/ely-parker-admitted-new-york-bar-native-american-civil-war/