The Life of John Parker, Jr.

The Life of my Father John Parker, Jr.

From memory by Alice Parker Isom

My great grand parents were Richard and Alice Easton Parker. They were parents of six children, Grandfather John Parker, their son married Ellen Eskin [Heskin].

They were parents of ten children, Isabella, Robert, Richard, Roger, Nancy, John, William, (who died) Ellen, Alice, Mary. My father John Parker Jr., was born in the same household his father was, in Lancashire, England, on the 14th day of February, 1812.



The family were religious. I think most if not all of them belonged to the Church of England. They were all taught to pray and were strict observers of the Sabbath. Those principles father carried out through his life. He had no schooling but learned to read and write. In his youth and early manhood he farmed and tended some sheep and cattle. Just what could be kept on a small farm, which they had to rent. All the land in that country was owned by and controlled by landlords.

He also wove and made brooms of small willows, called besoms, such as were used to sweep streets and stables. The had flu-suttle [ shuttle ?] looms in their homes. Lancashire being a cotton manufacturing district, many people who couldn’t leave home to work in the factory, wove in this way in the home. Every child had to help earn a living. I have heard father tell of having to wake his sister Mary at three o’clock in the morning to leave to work in the factory when she was only six years old. They were honest industrious and
thrifty but there was no chance to get ahead in that country. The rich owned the land. Very few of the common people owned a home. It would seem nothing to us but slavery and indeed it was to them until the
gospel set them free.


About 1834-5 father married Alice Widaker of Ribchester, Lancashire, England. In 1837 the first Latter-day Saint elder came to England. When in the little village of Chaigley, they stayed with grandfather Parker.
Father was choir leader and played the violin in church.


A Mr. Richards was the pastor of the church. He had a daughter Amelia, who was very
intimate with my aunts. All were singers. Amelia told her father that there were some American ministers at old John’s [John Parker, Sr.] (that was the way the spoke to designate the difference in that country). Mr. Richards, thinking to give his flock a change, invited them to speak in his chapel. He did not give them another chance. He said that they had deluded all of the best of his congregation and led them astray. Most of the choir were converted. Amelia was one of them. She married Elder Willard Richards before he returned to America.

John Parker, Sr.

Grandfather, grandmother, father, and wife, his brother Roger, sisters: Ellen and Alice and their husbands Edward and William Corbridge and sister Mary received the gospel and were baptized all the same day, for I
have heard father tell of this incident of his baptism:

“It was a cold frosty night. There was going to be some baptisms. Father and others went to look on. He and a young man stood together. They wished they had brought cloths so that they could be baptized. The
young man said, “We can borrow Mag’s dress”. They did so. Father said that getting into that wet dress was worse than the ice water.”

Grandfather and grandmother crossed the sea in the first ship chartered for the Latter-day Saints. And settled in Nauvoo. None of their children came with them. They had never been twenty miles from their birth place before. It took faith, yes, a perfect faith and knowledge to induce people to forsake all and go to a new world for the gospel’s sake. Aunt Mary [Mary Heskin Parker] followed the next year and was married to Samuel W. Richards.

                                           










Samuel W. Richards

Father’s wife Alice bore him six children. Three were born dead. She died with the last. It was a great sorrow to him to have her taken that way. I never heard him speak of her death without showing the most tender
emotions. Mary Ann [was] four and one half. Aunt Alice did what she could while he remained in England to help him care for his little ones.

Father was afflicted with asthma more or less from the time he was twelve years old. One time when having a bad spell, brother Heber C. Kimball was there. It was when he was on his second mission. Father asked him to administer to him. Brother Kimball said to him, “Brother John, if you will not drink any more tea or coffee you shall be healed.” He did not touch him or pray for him but he was better. Some time after he was visiting at Aunt Alice’s, she had coffee and he took a cup, not thinking until he started with the Asthma again. This was after the death of his wife. His sorrow must have caused him to forget. He did not use tea or coffee after but suffered with asthma all his life, with the exception when change of climate relieved him.


On January the 17th ,1845, he set sail from England on the ship Palmyra, bound for America. Leaving his native land, brothers, sisters, and friends that had been dearest to him in life and the graves of his beloved dead. Taking his three little ones without any one related to him to assist him in their care, to cast his lot with the saints who were then and had been despised, persecuted and driven, their prophet and patriarch murdered for the religion he was now leaving all for. Could anyone doubt the sincerity, the implicit faith in God people had that would make such sacrifice in the face of such conditions.

It took all he had to emigrate to Nauvoo. He was sea sick all the fore part of the journey. They were weeks crossing the sea in those sailing vessels.  It was so long before he was well enough to comb and take care of the children’s hair, Elizabeth’s was in very bad condition. It was so thick.  Father could not see any way to manage it so he cut it off. It made her look a sight and feel so badly. The president of the company, Amos
Fielding, rebuked him severely for doing it.

They arrived safely in Nauvoo. He was assisted by his mother in caring for his children. In June of that year [1845], father took the chills and fever. Nauvoo being located in the bend of the river was moist or swampy
and super-induced Malaria. There was much suffering from this disease.  Father chilled every day for thirteen months but one and was much reduced in strength. Grandmother took chills and died the following year.  She had always said that she knew she couldn’t live if she had the chills. She only had two. This was another great sorrow. Again they were left in a bad condition, father sick, grandfather very feeble and three motherless children.

My mother, Ellen Briggs, was born in Lancashire, England, November seventh 1806. She married George Douglas, by whom she had eight children: Ralph, Richard, William, Ann, Isabelle, Mary, George and Ellen Vilate. William died when he was eleven years old.

The family joined the church [Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints] in March 1838. All that were old enough were baptized by Heber C. Kimball. They emigrated to America in a sailing vessel. No other saints were on board.

Heber C. Kimball


They were nine weeks crossing the sea. Reached Nauvoo April the sixth 1842. On the twlveth of July that year [1842], her husband George Douglas died, leaving her a widow with seven children. The eldest was sixteen. A stranger in a strange land with nothing, it having taken all their earthly possessions to emigrate.

But they were thankful that they were with the saints and had faith that God would take care of the widow and the fatherless. The oldest boys were willing to work and got work. Mother also went out to wash and do anything she could to help support the family.

The second year she was laid up so long with the chills that she could not do her own work. The family got very destitute. The Relief Society gave them assistance. She was a member of the first Relief Society and she saw the prophet both alive and dead.  Mother was very intimate with grandfather and grandmother Parker
before father emigrated. In fact, they had known each other before leaving England. They became better acquainted and decided to join their lives and families. They used to tell a joke of father: the only day that he
missed chilling in thirteen months, he was expecting mother to call. They were married in 1864 at Nauvoo, Samuel W. Richards performing the ceremony.

They had three children each under the age of ten years and grandfather who could not dress himself without help. Father was just getting over the chills. He often remarked that he got married to get somebody to take
care of him. They were devoted to each other throughout the remainder of their lives, over forty years. At the time they were married mother had their cow killed so they had beef and suet. Father had fifty cents that he
gave her. She bought currants and they had a plum pudding for their wedding dinner.

My parents and grandparents were endowed in the Nauvoo Temple.  My brother Ralph was married before my parents were.  Richard was working on a steamboat on the river. The saints were preparing to leave their homes in Nauvoo. Father and mother did not have money enough to take the family down to St. Louis, where they decided to take refuge, so father, mother, and sister Ann went down, leaving Isabelle, a little girl not yet twelve years old to look after grandfather, herself, and six smaller children. They had no stove. She had to bake and do all the cooking by the fireplace. She did wonderfully well.

Father got a job at a root beer factory at seventy-five cents a day. He was too weak to earn more. Mother washed and housecleaned for seventy-five cents a day. Ann went to work for Mr. Debond. There was
himself his wife and a baby. As soon as they earned sufficient mother went back to Nauvoo and brought the family. Then Mary got a job to tend the baby where Ann lived. They were very kind people. Some of the girls
lived with them all the time we stayed in St. Louis. St. Louis was a good place for poor saints. Provisions were very cheep [cheap] and the people were very kind to them. The Debonds were wealthy people. They never had any kind of food set on the table a second time. Roasts of beef, having only a slice or two taken off or cake almost untouched were thrown into the garbage. Ann ask [asked] Mrs. Debond if she would be willing to have one of her little brothers come and get it. She was glad to have them do so. I have heard mother say you could buy a first class cheese so large the boys had to wheel it home in the wheelbarrow for a dollar and a half.

Every child that was large enough to do anything found something to do. The family were soon quite comfortable. Father stayed at the same place a year and one half learning the business by observing in his own quiet way. He was an honest industrious and thrifty man, affectionate and kind, ready to assist the needy and afflicted, where ever he could.

Mother was very capable and systematic as a housewife, could turn her hand to almost any kind of work, expert with the needle and had excellent government. She had the government of the family. Father
didn’t do much at it but she see [saw] to it that none of them did any thing to displease him. His wishes were always held up to us as something we must obey so that peace, love and unity characterized the home.

I [Alice Parker] was born January the eighth 1848. My brother John was born the first of November 1851 in St. Louis Missouri.  Father went into the business of soda-water, root beer and summer drinks in partnership with a man by the name of John Carns in 1848.  They were very prosperous. They employed over one hundred men in the summer time.

Richard Douglas married Elizabeth Wadsworth, and Ann married Edwin Robbins, February 27th 1848. Isabelle married John Pincock a year later.  They all belonged to the church [Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints] and worked in the soda factory for father. Ralph went with the Mormon Battalion. When coming back with sick soldiers they met the pioneers. They turned and went into the valley with them. He with another soldier hoisted the flag on Ensign Peak. They also made the first adobes in Salt Lake Valley,
they having seen the Mexicans making adobes. They were much larger than those used later. Ralph built the first adobe house in Ogden. After he had returned with his wife and baby they settled in Ogden.

In the spring of 1852 father sold out his business and prepared to emigrate. Mother sewed the lining of his and Richards vests full of twenty dollar gold pieces and put a false lining in them when they went to buy
the outfits in which to cross the plains. They bought eleven wagons, two yokes of oxen or cows to each wagon, a threshing machine, and stoves, a complete outfit to take to the valley. They also had one large spring
carriage with projection boards at the sides, so that the bed could be made across. This was drawn by two large horses. Father, mother, and grandfather and we two little children rode in it. Aunt Alice and uncle
Edwin Corbridge came to St. Louis in 1850. They buried two children while there.


Aunt Ellen and uncle William Corbridge came in 1852, just before we left. The night before they reached New Orleans they lost their little daughter Margaret. They never knew what became of her, whether she had been kidnapped or fallen overboard, they could not find her and had to leave the boat without her.


Father brought all my brothers and sisters, his two sisters and families across the plains. It was an independent company. He only hired one teamster. We came without an accident of any kind. The cows furnished
milk and butter for the company, besides taking their places as teams.  The milk was strained into a kit in the morning and the jolt of the wagon churned it. The only non-Mormon in the company was the teamster, a
Catholic on his way to California in search of gold. The rest were all relations and a jolly crowd they were. They often spoke of crossing the plains as a pleasure trip. Many emigrants had died of cholera that year
and the year before. We saw where they had been buried by the beds and clothing left by their graves.

August 28th 1852, we arrived in Salt Lake Valley. Father bought a half lot of Samuel W. Richards on second south, between east and west temple and built a two room one story house, forty by twenty feet, with lumber
roof. The sons and sons-in-law rigged up the thresher. It was an eight horse power, that they called a chaff piler, separated the straw from the grain. They threshed and cleaned thirteen thousand bushels of grain before Christmas. This was one if not the first threshers brought to Utah.  It did good work but not at the rate that they thresh now. A few years later father had the thresher made into a separator and did away with the fan mill. Some of his decendents [descendents] have owned and run a thresher in Salt Lake Valley ever since.

On October the fourth 1852 my brother John died. He was eleven months old. He was buried in our lot. Several years later the body was exumed and taken to the cemetery.

The pioneers did a lot of dancing. Not having public halls they danced in each others homes. The people would take out the stove, beds or what ever furniture they had outside, to make room for the dancers. Our
rooms were large enough so that we were not put to that trouble. About every week they danced at our house. Everybody danced. While I write I can see father and mother dancing. William playing the violin. All
evening affairs were announced to commence at early candle light. Father arranged for side lights. We had a six inch board, eighteen inches long with a hole in [it] to hold the candle, nailed to the lower end. There would be at least one of these at each side of the house. Candles were scarce. People came on time so that they weren’t wasted.


In those early days there was no fruit, no good molasses, honey or sugar only what was hauled a thousand miles by ox team. People made molasses out of squash, beets, corn husks or anything that would yield a
little sweet juice, that would boil down. It was poor stuff. There was no soda to be had. Father took a team and went back to some alkali beds and gathered a wagon load of salaratas [salaratis (potassium bicarbonate)]. This was used in cooking. He also went to Salt Lake and gathered a load of salt from the shore. For fine salt this was ground in the coffee mill. The ashes were saved to make lye soap. In the fall of the year people would go into the canyon and gather wild berries. Father took us to the foot of the big mountain and the family gathered several bushels of service berries which were dried for use.

In 1853 father built a saw mill in a canyon northeast of Bountiful. He took James. They made wrapping paper and paste board. For some reason they sold out in two years. Father then bought a farm from Orson
Hyde over Jordon [Jordan]. He didn’t pay all down. What was due was to draw interest at ten percent and compound. Father took wagon loads of wheat for interest before he got it paid. That was the only debt he contracted in his life. The farm was under the hill on the west bank of the Jordon. The canal that irrigated it
is still used. No land was cultivated above that canal, from there to the west mountain was the Jordon Range. Father and the boys hauled wood from Bingham Canyon.

Ralph and Richard Douglas, Edmond Robbins and John Pincock with their families settled permanently in Ogden. These were mothers eldest children. Father and those men were like brothers, the closest of friends while they lived. Aunt Ellen and uncle William Corbridge lived in Bountiful until 1859, when they moved to Cache Valley. They were pioneers of Franklin, where they made their permanent home. Aunt Alice and uncle Edwin Corbridge lived and died in Bountiful. They were the best of people, loved by everyone for their kindness. Aunt Mary died when her sixth child was born, June 3, 1859. The baby was buried with her, three children they left.

John Pincock



Father loaned William Jennings, the millionaire, the money to buy the first beef steer that he killed when he started in the butcher business. He also sold him a piece of land across the bottom of our lot, where he built a tannery. Jennings lot ran back from the east side of the block. Ours from the north, he had the slaughter house on the back of his.







Maria Jackson Normington joined the church in Burnley, Lancashire, England and with her husband Thomas Normington, five children, three girls and two boys, left their native land together with the saints. They
started to cross the Plains with handcarts in Edward Martin’s Company.  The early snows detained them and caused extreme suffering from cold and starvation. Many of the emigrants died. Among them, Thomas
Normington and two of the boys. One of the little boys had cried for bread. Someone found him a small piece. He died with it between his teeth. Hannah the youngest girl took it from his mouth and ate it. They
were so near starved and frozen and the mother was very sick when relief reached them from the valley.

They arrived in Salt Lake City November the thirtieth 1856. William Parker went with the relief. The poor emigrants were taken into the homes of the saints where they were cared for. Lovina, eleven, was taken to the home of brother Alexanded [Alexander ?] . Mary Ellen came to my sister Mary’s. She was aged nine.
The mother and Hannah (age seven) were taken to the home of brother Empey.

Later sister Normington and Hannah came to live with us and in 1867 [probably 1857] father married the widow. It was a long time before Aunt Maria, as we always called her, fairly recovered. She had two
children by father, Richard, born January the twenty first 1859 and Maria born May the nineteenth 1863.


In 1857 my sister Mary married James Curry and Mary Ann married Samuel W. Richards; Elizabeth married John R. Winder and Vilate Ellen married George Romney.

The eighth of January 1858, grandfather died.


On the twenty-fourth of July 1857 the pioneers of Salt Lake City and near by settlements celebrated the day at the head of Big Cottonwood Canyon at Silver Lake. Most of our family were there. It was a wonderful event. People came with horse teams, ox teams, all kinds of vehicles and on horseback. There was a Company of lancers. William and George belonged to the company. They were dressed in white pants with blue stripes up the sides and white shirts and carried a painted rod with a long steel lance in the end that shone in the sun. They looked fine on their horses. There were several bands, both brass bands and fine dancing music. Bowerys had been erected for the occasion. In the heighth of our celebration word was brought that an army of soldiers under general Harney were coming to annilitate [annilhilate] the Mormons.













Brigham Young


President Young [Brigham Young] called the people together to hear the dispatch read and said;


“When we arrived in Salt Lake Valley ten years ago, I said, If our enemies will let us alone ten years, I will ask no odds of them, and I do not.”


The festivities went on as though nothing had happened. One prophetic song called “ dud dah” was composed and sung by William Polter of Ogden. Some time afterwards the people made a covenant that if our enemies did come, we would burn our homes and leave the country as bare as we found it. The following lines will convey an idea of how the people felt at that time:

“If Uncle Sam’s determined on his very foolish plan,
The Lord will fight our battles and we’ll help Him all we can,
If what they now propose to do should ever come to pass,
We’ll throw down all our houses, every soul shall emigrate,
And we’ll organize ourselves into a roving mountain state.
Every move will make our vigor, like a ball of snow increase,
and we’ll never sue to them, but they to us for peace.”


Preparations were soon made to prevent the army from coming into the valley. Read Whitney’s history of the Echo Canyon War. Father or some of the boys, two or three at a time were out in the mountains all winter.
William was with Lot Smith when he burned the wagons. In May 1858, the citizens living north of Utah County, abandoned their homes and moved south. Our families living in Ogden, with Aunts Ellen and Alice
with their families, stayed at father’s farm until all had to go south of the point of the Mountain. Then they camped on the Jordon west of Lehi.  Again most of the company that crossed the plains were journeying and
camping together. As a matter of course, father took charge of the camp.  They were only there three weeks when word came that we could go back to our homes.

The army had been allowed to march through the apparently deserted city and were camped about two or three miles from our farm for a while before locating at camp Floyd. Father had made lumber boxes a foot square and four feet long, had filled them with flour and had cashed them before we left. We did not know that we would see our house again but he had the flour and could not take it. In case of a chance it would be there. They had crops growing and when we returned had a ready market for all our surplus at the
soldier camp. We were destitute for clothing. Father often remarked that the army not only bought the goods but the money to buy them with.  What our enemies had intended for our destruction proved to be a blessing in disguise.

While a portion of the army camped on the Jordon Range, some of the soldiers came to the farm to buy butter, eggs, chickens and milk. Some of the camp followers bought [brought ?] merchandise and all needful articles. During the time of the move we had to ravel out pieces of factory and twist the ravelings together for mending thread. Father made a lemon syrup and took it to Camp Floyd and sold soda water. He had made a barrel of syrup at a cost of fifty dollars. In going around the point of the Mountain the wagon tipped over, the head of the barrel came out and lost all the syrup. He returned home, made another barrel, took it and made three hundred dollars out of it.

Father also got some sheep, so that the family began to spin and weave their clothes. After we were settled at home again Maria lived on the farm.  Father had to spend most of his time there in the summer but always
came to town on Saturday night, so he could attend the morning and  afternoon services at the tabernacle on Sunday.

Mother and father made a visit every winter to their children in Ogden. In the winter of 1861 they took their loom with them, had a wagon bed on bob-sleds. They sent word ahead to the girls to have their yarn dyed and ready and they would do their weaving while they visited. All of them lived in log houses, not much room for a loom but they managed somehow. It did not take long to weave a hundred yards of cloth. We could not color them as now, in a few hours. Blue, it took ten days or more. The yarn had to be wrung out every day in the indigo dye and put to air. until the desired shade.  Yellow was colored with prach leaves and alum. Blue was put in yellow dye to make green dye. Red was colored in madder dye [made from the madder root] set with copperus [copperas; ferrous sulfate]. We used logwood set with coppras or vitral for black.

Oct. the sixth 1862, father was called to Dixie to raise cotton. He thought best to take part of the family. So it was decided that mother and I should go and get some kind of place before he took Aunt Maria and the
little ones. There was no alfalfa and not much hay of any kind in those days. Our teams were grained and turned out to pick what ever they could find while we camped. We were three weeks on the road.

We arrived at Virgin, Dec. twelvth 1862. The team was turned out and we did not see them for three weeks. There was an abandoned cellar that had been built up with rock and had caved in. Father had our wagon drawn up to it and began to clear it out again and built it up. He had brought two window sashes, six light, eight by ten. He hued out cottonwood poles for frames and with the sash made the best window in town. He made the door frame the same and took some cottonwood stocks fastened them together with pegs, then sewed a linsey blanket over them for a door. The roof was cottonwood poles, covered with dirt. The floor was flat rocks. There was not a foot of lumber in the house. He didn’t get it finished until spring but the winter was so mild we lived comfortably out of doors. He took up five acres of land on North Creek. He dug an
irrigation ditch and put in a crop. He bought a city lot and set out an orchard. Mother and I learned to card and spin cotton.


Bro Thomas Cottom came to Dixie the same year and worked a yoke of cows of fathers in his team, so both he and father benefited thereby. In the spring the people of Virgin were called to fit out five wagons, two yoke of cattle each, a teamster with provisions to go to Florence Nebraska, to emigrate the saints. Father furnished supplies and gave enough to the perpetual [emigration fund, to] emigrate one soul from England.


He had the privilege to say who he would have come. They in turn were to pay back to the immigration company. He sent for Bro. Richard Parkenson, who came and lived neighbor to us until his death.

In August 1863 we went back to Salt Lake City. Father turned wheat in at the general tithing office and took orders on the Parowan and Cedar. The roads were so bad from those towns to Virgin that a good team did not haul more than fifteen hundred. In Oct. he returned, taking Aunt Maria and family. All but Mary Ellen. She preferred to remain in the city until mother and I went. Our house in Salt Lake City had never been finished. That year mother had it raised to a two story house and finished. It was rented as soon as it was finished for one hundred dollars a month in greenbacks or fifty in gold.

Father had a frog [heavy farm implement or tool] felon [fall on] in his hand in the summer of 1864. He was three weeks that he could not sleep or do anything. As soon as he could tend his team he returned to Salt Lake City. He had bought another lot with a dug-out on and took mother and I back to live in it. Mary Ellen went with us but did not stay only about a year. Sometime after her return to Salt Lake City she was married to Thomas Cook. Lovina married William Wright, and Hannah David Otte. They both made homes at Dunkans Retreat. Father was not troubled with Asthma the first few years in Dixie. He was a very good singer and did lots of it both at home and in public. He worked very hard on roads and water ditches and tended his farms. It was hard work to control the water.
 

The country is so broken up all hills mountains and hollows, so that it did not take more than a good shower to make a flood sufficient to break the ditches. Many of them were dug on the side of a perpendicular hill. The mountains are not like those in Salt Lake and Utah Valleys. There are all kinds of shapes, some tableland mountains, flat on top, almost straight up with a ledge of rock over ten feet. In some places there is level country for miles when you are on top. The Hurricane Canal is built for three or four miles in the Hurricane Mountains. In some places they had to tunnel through places where the mountain projected out and they couldn’t work around them and they had to tunnel through.


A good deal of the canal is two hundred feet above the river. The city ditch at Virgin was built around the hill where a man had to be let down with a rope and held in position while a flume was put in place.

The crops that were grown there for several years were not sufficient to pay the water tax, the people were short of bread stuff, some people piled cottonwoods up and burned them into ashes, which they gathered up and hauled north to exchange for wheat.  In those days ashes were used for making lye for soap. Cottonwoods made the best ashes. Father had plenty and shared with many. No one was ever turned from his door empty. He raised cotton and the family carded and spun. Father, mother and Aunt Maria were all good weavers.  They brought the loom to Dixie and a small flock of sheep. Wool rolls and spinning wheels. We made all of our clothing.

On stormy days father always found something to do. He would mend a pair of shoes or harness. There was no alfalfa or hay of any kind. When the team was needed two or three days together, father would cut a jag of cottonwood limbs and bring home. The horses would peel all the bark off and eat it.  They did very well on it.




The Indians became very troublesome during the winter 1865 and 6, driving off stock and killing some whites. It was necessary to guard the town and send out several expeditions. Father couldn’t go but he always
assisted in fitting them out that did. Father built a two roomed house for mother. The Indians were so bad they had to fort in. Our house and dugout were inside the fort. Aunt Maria moved into the dug-out. As soon as
it became safe to move out of the fort, father bought another lot with a good log house on. He built an adobe room making Aunt Maria a comfortable home.

The third of June 1867 father, mother and I returned to Salt Lake City and stayed five months. Father had the old threshing machine and fanning mill fixed up and took to Dixie. It was the first thresher on the Virgin River. He also brought the first mowing machine to Dixie. He bought a molasses mill but they were making good molasses here before his arrival.

June 1869 father, mother, George Isom and I went to Salt Lake City. We went thru SanPete County to sell molasses and dried fruit. On the twelfth of July George Isom and I [ Alice Parker ] were married in the
endowment house by Joseph F. Smith.  Father and Mother were present. After two weeks visit with the family and purchasing goods for a co-op store we returned. Both teams were loaded. This was the first store
brought to the river settlements. Father used to say that he never saw any money in Dixie only what he took with him. But there was no use for any. He couldn’t see where a hundred dollars was coming to buy the one
thousand dollars worth of goods that they had brought. They boarded up the porch at the back of Mother’s house. Put shelves and counter in and opened up the store. They sold one hundred dollars worth of goods the
first day.


Father gave George and I the first lot that he had bought in Virgin to build on so that we could be near them. In July 1870 father and Aunt Maria made a trip to Salt Lake. They brought more goods back. The business had increased in the store and father found it necessary to have more living room. They added three rooms to the east end of the house and enlarged the room at the west for the store.  In the fall of 1877 father sent to Salt Lake City and brought my sister Mary Ann and family to Dixie. Her husband had another family. He had lost their home through a mortgage. Father thought that he could help her and she be a comfort to him until her husband could pick up again. Alice [Alice Parker Richards] the eldest daughter, lived with father and mother and helped in the store for a year. Then she went back to be married to John [Edmund] Pincock.

John E. Pincock

Mary Ann buried their baby in the summer of ’78. Wealthy the second daughter, taught school. Annie clerked in the store. Carrie helped to care for father and mother. My cousin Ianthus [Richards] came with Mary
Ann and he assisted Wealthy in the school and worked on the farm in the summer. His mother, Aunt Mary [Mary Heskin Parker] died when he was two years old and Mary Ann raised him. We had built an eight room house and they [Mary Ann Parker Richards and family] lived with us the first three years, then father and Ianthus built them a home.

The whole family brought a refining influence. They were very social and active in all the organizations of the ward. Their influence was felt in Virgin many years after they had gone. Wealthy went back the fourth year and was married to D. H. Ensign of Ogden.

Annie married David Spilsbury, Ianthus, [married] Agnes Hinton, and Nellie [married] Joseph Hilton. They settled in Dixie. After seven years Mary Ann’s husband came and took her home. They did not think that their separation would be so long when she first came down. There was a movement in the church [Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints] to try to co-operate in all businesses.

A co-operative cattle association was organized, Father was president. They took up the Blue Springs Ranch on Kolob. They had a fine herd of cattle known as the Kolob herd. There was a movement in the church to co-operate in all business. They ran a dairy. There was plenty of unclaimed grazing land; cattle brought a low price but it did not cost much to run them. Father sold our home in Salt Lake City for three thousand five hundred dollars.  It was sold for one hundred thousand in less than two years. He used a portion of this money to build up on Blue Springs Ranch.

Hugh Hilton and Alexander Wright had built a burr flour mill at Virgin.  The race was near the river and it was very expensive to keep up. Every flood would tear it out. They became discouraged and father bought the

mill. It was not a profitable investment but it was a blessing to the community. It was burned down once but father had teams on the road to Salt Lake to get a new one in less than a week. The trip had to be made all the way by team. I don’t know whether the mill ever paid for itself or not, but I know that the only special request he made in his will was that his heirs would keep the mill in the family and keep it in running order. It did not make enough to pay the running expense after his death. The children of the North gave me their share and at last it was all left to me. I couldn’t keep it up. Floods took the entire race and rollermills were being built in the country.

In 1874 Brigham Young came to Virgin City and organized a branch of the United Order. Father was President and George Isom was Vice-President and secretary. Most of the ward joined and worked in it for two years. Then it was decided to give it up. The people did not seem to be prepared for it.

On New Year’s Day in 1876 the temple at St. George was dedicated.  Father and his children went and did work for all his progenitors that he could remember or get a record of.

His [John Parker, Jr.] health failed, his breath [breathing] was so bad that he could get around but very little. He could not get out in frosty weather at all. He could study and advise for the good of his ward. His
counselors took charge of the Sabbath meetings for years. In 1879 father gave up the management of the Co-op store. George Isom built a store building and the store was moved. Father was still president with George Isom as secretary and manager.

My brother Richard Parker married Betsey Burk January 28, 1880. Mar 19, 1881 Aunt Maria died. Father was very sick at the time. She was a good faithful wife and mother and a true Latter Day Saint, loved by all who knew her.  June 1881 my sister Maria married John H. Hilton. December 6, 1885 George Isom died. He was first counselor to the bishop and had been ward Clerk ever since father had been Bishop. He went daily to see him and looked after any business that father might want done. When the president of the stake came to the funeral [of George Isom] father asked to be released from the bishopric. He felt that his main prop was taken, but his resignation was not accepted.

On March 24th 1886 father died. The list time he was out of the house was to George’s funeral. He was bishop of the Virgin ward eighteen years. And although feeble in health served faithfully. Apostle Erastus Snow told the people that they couldn’t realize how they were blessed in having such a bishop so wise in counsel, and always studying for their welfare. He was a humble, quiet man, full of love and sympathy, a patient sufferer, trying always to lighten the burdens of those who waited on him. He was strictly honest and a consistant Latter Day Saint. Those who knew him best loved him most.

Erastus Snow

My mother [Ellen Briggs Douglas Parker] died February 24, 1888. She had always wanted to live to take care of father until the last. She was granted her desire. I wish to say to their decendents that we have much
to be thankful for that we were born of such parents that taught us both by example and precept, to be honest and industrious and to live according to the principles of the Gospel.

My story is rather rambling but it is as it comes to me. I could not write my father’s life without telling of the family, the country conditions an [and] pioneer life. All were so closely connected. I feel that I have written
the truth and hope to be excused for mistakes in my composition.

Alice Parker Isom

Note: Photos added; comments or additions in brackets added by: D. G. Pincock