Our Parker Family History Table of Contents
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- Grandmother Bess Carney Parker
Our Parker Family HistoryTable of ContentsAbout This Book Thanks to Cousins, Friends and Family 6 Loretta Pauline Leroy Parker 6 The Parker History Team 6 Grandmother Bess Carney Parker 7 An American Story 8 Other Resources For You: 9 The Parker Family in Ireland 10 Why So Difficult? 13 The Scarcity of Vital Records 14 Comparing Ireland with Iowa, 1860. 14 The Family in Ulster; County Down 14 Ballinteggart, Newry, County Down 16 Leaving Home 17 Arrival in America 20 Our Parkers Arrive in America 20 Landing at New York 20 West Again 20 Farming in Scott County; Making Friends 21 Settling in Cleona Township, Scott County, Iowa 21 Index 49
The Farm 22 The Times 23 Church 24 School 24 Neighbors, Friends and Relationships; Ross, Paul, Lavender 24 Robert and Susanna Buried at Durant 25 Life Without Father 25 West Again; New Homes 26 The Farm is Sold 26 Moving Near Gilman 26 Why Here? 26 New Generations, New Connections 26 Parkers Near Gilman 26 The Telephone Men 27 Iowa and the Parkers and the Telephone 27 Beginnings 27 Robert Lavender Parker, Telephone Pioneer 29 I Remember 29 Growing at Gilman and Grinnell 30 The Family of Bess Carney 32 Starting On and Down the Wires 32 The Traer Years 32 Moving and Building 33 To Illinois, Bloomington and Geneseo 33 In Geneseo 33 His Family 33 Back to Gilman 33 Robert Donald Parker, Telephone Man 34 His Youth 34 With Esther Pauline Swanson 34 Independent Telephony 34 With Mother Bell 34 Remembering Dad 34 My Side 34 Robert Marion Parker Family 34 With Mom and Dad 34 My Best Decision, Loretta 36 After Bradley 36 My Children, My Pride 36 The Places We Lived 36 Back to Story City 36 Diane Margaret Parker Little Family 36 Diane, My Sister 36 Roger H. Little 36 Their Children 36 Etc. 36
The Family in 2012 36 Our Parkers: Histories of the 16 Who Came 36 Introductions 36 Father Robert 38 Mother Susanna 38 Son James 39 Isaac 39 Mary Ann 39 Robert 40 Ester 40
Susanna 40 David 40
Jeane (Eliza) 41 Matilda 41 Agnes, 1st 41 Ellen 41
Isabelle 41 William 41 Richard 41 Samuel 43 Agnes, 2nd 43 Unanswered Questions 44 Sources and Resources 44 Grandmother Bess's Notes, a Family Treasure 44 Questions Remain 44 Notes from The Team 45 Stories 45 Web Sites 45 Photographs, Maps, Sketches 45 Sources. 45 Notes 47
About This Book Why? I’m writing this because I am very proud of my family’s history, and I want to pass on all that I know about it to my children and grandchildren. Knowing our family history helps us to answer some questions that seem to be born in us. These questions seem to come to mind throughout our lives, as we try to understand who we are, why God gave us life and what should we do about our problems. Where did I come from? How did I get here? Who were my ancestors? What kind of people were they? How am I like or different from them? How does my own history suggest I should act now? I have been very interested in the history of my family, my country and our human race since I was a little boy. I have been given hundreds of photographs, stories, memoirs and personal items from our ancestors. I hope this work will help you – my family – know yourselves and understand your heritage. I intend this book to be your guide to all of the information I have assembled about our ancestors. I want my heirs to be able to find in one place everything we’ve collected about our many ancestors and relatives. We should respect and be proud of them. They were all Christians and American Pioneers. Who? Like most Americans, ours is a family of immigrants. Our Parkers – fourteen of them - came to Iowa from County Down in Northern Ireland in 1861. Here they met other families, some of whom had preceded them to Iowa. The earliest we have found to be Thomas Brown. He came from England in 1635, and settled in Newbury, Massachusetts. His descendants came across Iowa by stagecoach in 1853. Bartholomew Carney (whose name may have been Cronin in County Cork) came over from Ireland in 1836, and began building railroads in Masssachusetts. He brought his family in a covered wagon to Poweshiek County in 1851. His son, John, became Grandmother Bess’s father at Gilman. In this book, our family includes all of the people living now who are related to me, Robert Marion Parker, plus all of our ancestors. My ancestors begin with my father and mother. I have many resources on the other branches; on Dad’s side there were Browne, Carney, Lavender, Paul, and Ross people. Mom’s side includes the Swanson and Bartlett people. And there are Loretta’s family, the Leroys. The earliest we find in America was Simeon Leroy, a master carpenter who was born in France and died in Kingston, New York, in 1711. Your ancestors begin with your father and mother. The ancestors of your son or daughter begin with you. I might have a family tree with 700 people in it, but my grandson or granddaughter will have a much bigger family tree because of the people added by my wife’s family and the families of my daughters and sons. And so the trees get bigger and bigger as the generations of our family succeed us. I have been using two family tree programs for some years; Ancestry.com and Family Tree Maker. Both are known as “Parker Family Tree 1,”and are publicly available. You should be able to access them. Thanks to Cousins, Friends and Family Loretta Pauline Leroy Parker My principal enabler for the last 55 years has been my wife, Loretta. Not only has she given me our five very good children, but she has understand and supported my engagement with our family’s history. God Bless You, Loretta. The Parker History Team A few years ago, in November of 2007, two distant cousins and I got together to research the backgrounds of our Parker ancestors. John Parker1, farmer at Gilman, Iowa and Richard Frances Ross2, who has homes at Ames, Iowa and South Pasadena, California are distant cousins of mine. John David Parker owns and farms land that has been in his (our) family more than one hundred years. John is a graduate of Simpson College. His great grandfather was Richard Parker, one of those who came in 1862. He is our link with the many Parkers who stayed near Gilman. John is also acquainted with several other Irish emigrant families who were neighbors and friends and even married with our ancestors in Scott, Marshall, Jasper and Poweshiek counties in Iowa. Dr. Richard Frances Ross retired from Iowa State University, where he taught and studied veterinary medicine and was Dean of both the College of Veterinary Medicine and the College of Agriculture. He was raised on a farm near Westchester, Iowa. His great grandmother was Mary Ann Parker Ross, a child of Robert and Susanna Parker. The Ross family were neighbors of our Parkers in Cleona Township. Colin Rodgers joined us about two years ago. Colin is an anesthesiologist who lives in Carlisle, England very near the border with Scotland. He is related to us through families that were known to our ancestors in Ireland and in the early days in Iowa. Colin still has close ties with his people in County Down. He’s made trips to Ireland and discovered many old records of importance to us. I want to thank Richard and John and Colin for their cooperation. I am proud to know them. I wish I had found them many years ago. The four of us are still working to uncover the exact location and circumstances of the Parkers in County Down. From here on in this story I shall refer to the four of us as “The Parker History Team.” Grandmother Bess Carney ParkerBess Carney Parker, my grandmother, was through her long life a wonderful family historian. She was mostly responsible for my own lifelong interest in the history of our family and our country. A great many of the facts and stories concerning her pioneering Browne and Carney families and her husband’s Parker family were passed on to us by Grandmother Bess. I loved her very much. Here is a photograph of Grandmother Bess taken in 1949, when I was 14 years old. It is the way I remember her most. Grandmother Bess was a lady, personified. Born Annie Elizabeth Carney at Gilman, Iowa on February 17, 1881, she was the great historian of our Parker family. She studied and wrote about the history of her mother Martha Emma Browne’s family, who arrived by stagecoach in Blackhawk County in 1853. She researched and wrote about her father John McCormick Carney’s family and their covered wagon journey from Pennsylvania to Poweshiek County in 1854.1 She met grandfather Robert Lavender Parker at a young persons’ church party and married him on the last day of December, 1901. 
Their marriage produced three children; Winifred, Muriel and my dad, Robert Donald Parker. Until her last days she wrote of Parker history. Bess made charts and maps and notes and stories about our Parkers, sometimes handwritten, sometimes typed and sometimes drawn by hand. She died in 1974. She passed them on to me and her granddaughter Carol Beachler. These materials fill more than one filing cabinet drawer. You’ll see many of them quoted or referenced in this book. Some are included in computer files, some still handwritten or typed by grandmother Bess. There are many photographs, which I hope to index and pass on to someone who will cherish them as I have. I wrote a small booklet about Grandmother Bess in 1993. I won’t repeat all of it here, but will see to it that readers can access it. May God bless Annie Elizabeth Carney Parker!
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