Park's eleventh child, also named James Park, was born in the Park House in 1822. The younger James Park graduated from East Tennessee College in 1840 and from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1846, after which he was licensed as a Presbyterian preacher. He briefly served as co-principal of the East Tennessee Female Institute before moving to Rogersville in the 1850s to preach at that city's First Presbyterian Church. He returned to Knoxville in 1860 to accept a position as principal of the Tennessee School for the Deaf (then located in what is now Old City Hall).