Luther Parker
Collections of the New Hampshire Historical Society
Volume 11
Edited by Otis Grant Hammond, M.A.
Superintendent of the Society
Concord N.H., New Hampshire Historical Society 1915
The greater number of settlers who occupied the lands of southeastern Wisconsin during the years immediately preceding the sale of 1839 were of New York and New England origin. The biography of one of them, Luther Parker, may lay claim to special interest as illustrating the conditions of pioneer life, not only in Wisconsin, but in New Hampshire, where, before his migration to the West and participation in the building of the new commonwealth, he was actively concerned in one of the most interesting experiments in the history of American democracy, as well as in a border trouble which at one time threatened to result in complication between the United States and Great Britain.
Part One
and Luther Parker
New Hampshire and Wisconsin Pioneer
Chapter 1
Ancestry and Early Years
Luther Parker, the first white man to become permanently domiciled within the limits of the present township of Muskego, Waukesha County, Wisconsin, was born at Temple, Hillsborough county,, New Hampshire, near the Massachusetts line, on December 18, 1800, of Joshua Parker and Polly Taylor Parker, natives of Redding, Massachusetts, about ten miles north of Boston, and now called Wakefield. He was one of five brothers.
The Luther Parker ancestry in America begins with Thomas Parker, born in England in 1609, who sailed from London on March 11, 1635, in the expedition of the ships Suzan and Ellin, fitted out by Sir Richard Saltonstall, and landed at Lynn, Massachusetts. The Lynn annals recording his coming" "1635. Came this year, Thomas Parker, a farmer, who embarked at London, March 11, 1635."
Thomas Parker resided for several years at Lynn, the owner of forty acres of land, and in 1639 moved to Lynn Village, later called Redding (1644), still later South Redding (1813), and finally Wakefield (1868). Here he became deacon of the Redding church, which was built about 1644, its first minister being ordained ... pages missing.
married Polly Nicols in 1805; Lucinda (July 17, 1786), who married Samuel Pratt.
Joshua Parker and Polly Taylor (born November 11, 1774) were married in Redding on November 13, 1796, by Peter Sanborn. Their sons were five: Joshua ( February 16, 1798-July, 1878), who enlisted in the War of 1812; Luther (December 18, 1800-June 15, 1853), the subject of this biography; Ebenezer (October 19, 1804-February 3, 1805); Edwin (June 30, 1807-July 7, 1830); Asa (September 17, 1810-May 22, 1895). Between February 16, 1798, the date of Joshua's birth, and December 18, when Luther was born, the Parker family moved from Redding, Massachusetts, to Temple, New Hampshire. Joshua Parker's death occurred at Temple in June, 1855, and that of his wife in September, 1856.
Luther Parker received his early education in the common school at Temple. Other than that there is no information regarding his boyhood.
About the year 1816 he went to Stoneham, Massachusetts, near his father's former home, and learned the shoemaker's trade, being apprenticed in one of the numerous shops of that time, when nearly every farmer kept a shop where he spent the spare hours of the winter months and other periods of farm inactivity. Not content with the prospect of following this occupation through life, he returned to Temple and attended the academy at New Ipswich, not far distant. On the completion of his studies there he taught district school in the neighborhood of Albany, New York.
In 1825 and 1826 Luther Parker taught school at Stratford, New Hampshire, somewhat south of Colebrook, Cob's county, on the Connecticut river, nearly opposite and not far from Brunswick, Vermont. Here he met Alletta French, one of the ten children of Thomas Giles French of Brunswick. She was born on June 11, 1803 an had lived since her eighth or tenth year with the family of Squire Baldwin in Stratford, and was a pupil in Stratford school when Luther Parker became its Master
Luther Parker and Alletta French were married at Stratford on the 18th of February, 1827, and in the same year, probably soon after their union, settled on land in what was then usually known as the Indian Stream country. Here they remained until the spring of 1836.
CHAPTER 2-14
These chapters were not transcribed as it pertains to Luther's time at Indian Stream and does not pertain to Luther and Waukesha County.
Chapter 15
The Wisconsin Pioneer
Early in May, 1836, Luther Parker left Indian Stream for the wilderness of southeastern Wisconsin.
During the preceding year Alvin G. French of Brunswick, Vermont, a brother of Alletta French Parker, had settled on the virgin acres of the new country in what became the township of Pleasant Prairie, a few miles west of the present city of Kenosha, a settlement then known as Pike River. The effect upon a son of rugged Indian Stream of Mr. French's accounts of those beautiful tracts of soil, generous and peaceful, unencumbered by heavy timber, and yet not treeless, may easily be imagined. Add to this the turbulence through which Luther Parker had passed in New Hampshire, the still surviving uncertainty as to whether the triumph of the cause at Indian Stream and the advent of peace.
"Ten years of my life gone for nothing!" he is said to have exclaimed, as he drove out of the Indian Stream country by the road that led over the hill to Clarksville and the southwest.
Setting his affairs in order as far as possible by leaving his stock in trade, lands, and the major part of his other belongings in the hands of a friend in Clarksville and of his father in Temple, Luther Parker conveyed his family and scant goods by covered wagon as far as Whitehall, New York, on Lake Champlain, where he started them on their journey by anal through Troy to Buffalo, from Buffalo to Detroit by steamboat, from Detroit to Milwaukee through the lakes by schooner, and from Milwaukee to Pleasant Prairie by wagon. Alletta Parker';s brother, Thomas Giles French, and her sister Eunice accompanied her from Vermont, and Asa Parker joined the party at Troy, New York. Giles French and Asa Parker, having heard of choice lands near Milwaukee, returned thither with the wagon that had conveyed the family to Pleasant Prairie.
After parting from his family at Whitehall Luther Parker, with horses and covered wagon and a small equipment of goods, set out for the same destination. The journey was long and arduous. The condition of the roads, or rather the lack of roads, at some stages of his progress was such that on many days he could look back at nightfall to the spot on which he had encamped the previous night. When he finally arrived at Alvin French's at Pleasant Prairie it was about the twentieth of July, and his family had long been awaiting him.
With characteristic energy he made a claim to land not far from Alvin French's, and made provision for the breaking of sod. Meanwhile, however, Asa Parker and Giles French had reported especially attractive lands about fifteen miles to the southwest of Milwaukee, where they had made claims, the former on the south half of the northeast quarter of section two in the town of Muskego, and the latter on the south half of the southeast quarter of the same section. Asa Parker's shake was at the site of the present Tess Corners, and Giles French's bark wigwam near a mineral spring about eighty rods to the west. After a short time at Pleasant Prairie Luther Parker mounted his horse and rode northward to view the country where his brother and brother-in-law had settled. With water power in mind, as was natural for one who was familiar with the upper waters of the Connecticut, he rode beyond them several miles to the west, found Little Muskego lake, explored it, discovered the outlet, and at the shore where it left the lake located a claim of three hundred and twenty acres, the south half of section nine, town five, range twenty, east.
In January, 1837, six months after their arrival in the West, the Parker family, husband, wife, one son, nine years old, and three daughter, Persis Euseba, Ellen Augusta, and Amanda Melvina, aged seven,, four and two years, moved into the log cabin which Luther Parker had constructed on the wooded south shore of the lake. Giles French and Asa Parker had settled before him, but were both in temporary quarters and without family. Another settler, named Fields, had erected a cabin in the neighborhood, but had not occupied it with his family until later in the winter. Luther Parker may therefore be recorded as the first permanent white settler in the township of Muskego.
The Parker family remained in the log cabin three years. In 1839 Mr. Parker sold his claim to Anson H. Taylor for $800, but continued to reside on it until the spring of 1840, when he occupied a two hundred and forty acre holding to the south of Giles French, which had been abandoned, the northeast quarter and the east half of the northwest quarter of section eleven. The Muskego lands in the neighborhood were varied; there were heavily wooded parts, oak openings, and meadows. Here he resided until his death in 1853.
Luther Parker's capacity to endure hardship and privation found its second opportunity for demonstration in the Wisconsin wilderness. The stern conditions of the pioneering life of that period are so well known that they require no description here. There was the usual cabin of logs, with chinks through which the wind blew and the snow sifted, and with the old-fashioned fireplace and the danger from fire that accompanied it. There was the hard work of clearing, and the laborious two-day trips to Milwaukee by Indian trail, for the sack of flour and pork and other necessities to supplement the scant product of the first years of tillage. There was the need of skill and patience in the slow making by and of everything that there was no money to purchase. The shoemaker's kit which he had used during his apprentice days at Stoneham Mr. parker kept and used all his life.
There was the lack of medical conveniences, too, but not the lack of death. Little Amanda Melvina, the child born September 8, 1835, at Indian Stream, died of the fever in the Muskego cabin on August 8, 1838, and was buried on the shore of the lake. The grave is within the limits of the present Muskego Lake resort, but has long since been obscured.
Luther Parker's capacity for leadership, also, was displayed again in the new country. His natural ability, as well as the education he had received at Temple, Stoneham, and New Ipswich, his teacher's experience at Stratford and elsewhere, served him here as well as at Indian Stream, and the varied experiences in affairs through which he had passed in northern New Hampshire fitted him for similar experiences in Wisconsin.
In the land sale of 1839, which took place at public auction in Milwaukee, Mr. parker was entrusted by all the squatter sovereigns of the townships of Franklin and Muskego with the bidding in of their claims. The settlers, who were now first to acquire actual title, had previously met and agreed not to bid against each other, and it was also well understood that no bidding by land speculators was to be tolerated. Mr. Parker appeared in the auction room with a list of the neighbors' holdings in the hand, and as each holding was described by the auctioneer, he simply said, "$1.25 per acre," and at the close of each day's sale the certificates were made out and the cash paid over. Only one attempt at bidding by a speculator was made during his attendance on the sale. The bidder, who wished to get possession of an improved holding, found himself so boisterously jostled and crowded that, though it was all seemingly accidental, he was glad to be allowed to leave the room.
Mr. Parkers considerable legal knowledge was also called into action in the drawing in the contracts and other papers, and in court work. he was justice of peace for several terms, and tried many cases, and frequently conducted the cases of his neighbors in court when not in office. His law library was a scant book or two-Blackston's Commentaries, Cowan's Treaties, and the New Hampshire form book-but they served large purpose in those days.
He was a leader also in the educational affairs of the new settlement. The first school in Muskego came into existence in the fall of 1839, a little to the south of Tess Corners, and was built and supported by those of the settlers who were interested. here is the letter of one of the pupils, Luther Parker's son Charles, which affords a vivid picture of the manner of education in the wilderness:
"The schoolhouse was 14 x 16, of logs covered with shakes. It had two windows, rough green oak boards for floor, and seats of basswood slabs. On each side, where a window lighted a desk-like shelf against the wall, sat the larger pupils, with slates or writing-books, on a long bench, their backs to the teacher and the school. A little sheet-iron, barrel -shaped stove did the heating. It was brought all the way from New Hampshire by my father in his covered wagon, and donated to the school by him. The building and the school were a private enterprise, a free contribution by the few families, mostly New Englanders, who had children. It stood a little south of the present Tess Corners, and was built in the fall of 1839. Ellen, Persis, and I had to go two miles, as we lived the farthest west of the settlement. A Miss Hale taught the winter school. She was paid the generous sum of two dollars per week, and boarded round. All did their best the week the schoolma'am was with them; but there was no butter or milk in most places. Honey was substituted for both.
Two or three years after the town was organized the first school district. Sometimes a fairly qualified teacher was secured; often otherwise. One was an old man from New Hampshire; my father and he had been schoolmates. he was well qualified for the work, but we soon began to wonder why he went out every half hour, and boylike, we began to hunt; and one day-it was snowing-as soon as he returned from one of his outings, I asked to go out, and following his tracks, found hidden in the snow a pint whiskey flask. Then the boon March 11, 1635, in the expedition of the ships Suzan and Ellin, fitted out by Sir Richard Saltonstall, and landed at Lynn, Massachusetts. The Lynn annals recording his coming" "1635. Came this year, Thomas Parker, a farmer, who embarked at London, March 11, 1635."
Thomas Parker resided for several years at Lynn, the owner of forty acres of land, and in 1639 moved to Lynn Village, later called Redding (1644), still later South Redding (1813), and finally Wakefield (1868). Here he became deacon of the Redding church, which was built about 1644, its first minister being ordained ... pages missing.
married Polly Nicols in 1805; Lucinda (July 17, 1786), who married Samuel Pratt.
Joshua Parker and Polly Taylor (born November 11, 1774) were married in Redding on November 13, 1796, by Peter Sanborn. Their sons were five: Joshua ( February 16, 1798-July, 1878), who enlisted in the War of 1812; Luther (December 18, 1800-June 15, 1853), the subject of this biography; Ebenezer (October 19, 1804-February 3, 1805); Edwin (June 30, 1807-July 7, 1830); Asa (September 17, 1810-May 22, 1895). Between February 16, 1798, the date of Joshua's birth, and December 18, when Luther was born, the Parker family moved from Redding, Massachusetts, to Temple, New Hampshire. Joshua Parker's death occurred at Temple in June, 1855, and that of his wife in September, 1856.
Luther Parker received his early education in the common school at Temple. Other than that there is no information regarding his boyhood.
About the year 1816 he went to Stoneham, Massachusetts, near his father's former home, and learned the shoemaker's trade, being apprenticed in one of the numerous shops of that time, when nearly every farmer kept a shop where he spent the spare hours of the winter months and other periods of farm inactivity. Not content with the prospect of following this occupation through life, he returned to Temple and attended the academy at New Ipswich, not far distant. On the completion of his studies there he taught district school in the neighborhood of Albany, New York.
In 1825 and 1826 Luther Parker taught school at Stratford, New Hampshire, somewhat south of Colebrook, Cob's county, on the Connecticut river, nearly opposite and not far from Brunswick, Vermont. Here he met Alletta French, one of the ten children of Thomas Giles French of Brunswick. She was born on June 11, 1803 an had lived since her eighth or tenth year with the family of Squire Baldwin in Stratford, and was a pupil in Stratford school when Luther Parker became its Master
Luther Parker and Alletta French were married at Stratford on the 18th of February, 1827, and in the same year, probably soon after their union, settled on land in what was then usually known as the Indian Stream country. Here they remained until the spring of 1836.
CHAPTER 2-14
These chapters were not transcribed as it pertains to Luther's time at Indian Stream and does not pertain to Luther and Waukesha County.
Chapter 15
The Wisconsin Pioneer
Early in May, 1836, Luther Parker left Indian Stream for the wilderness of southeastern Wisconsin.
During the preceding year Alvin G. French of Brunswick, Vermont, a brother of Alletta French Parker, had settled on the virgin acres of the new country in what became the township of Pleasant Prairie, a few miles west of the present city of Kenosha, a settlement then known as Pike River. The effect upon a son of rugged Indian Stream of Mr. French's accounts of those beautiful tracts of soil, generous and peaceful, unencumbered by heavy timber, and yet not treeless, may easily be imagined. Add to this the turbulence through which Luther Parker had passed in New Hampshire, the still surviving uncertainty as to whether the triumph of the cause at Indian Stream and the advent of peace.
"Ten years of my life gone for nothing!" he is said to have exclaimed, as he drove out of the Indian Stream country by the road that led over the hill to Clarksville and the southwest.
Setting his affairs in order as far as possible by leaving his stock in trade, lands, and the major part of his other belongings in the hands of a friend in Clarksville and of his father in Temple, Luther Parker conveyed his family and scant goods by covered wagon as far as Whitehall, New York, on Lake Champlain, where he started them on their journey by anal through Troy to Buffalo, from Buffalo to Detroit by steamboat, from Detroit to Milwaukee through the lakes by schooner, and from Milwaukee to Pleasant Prairie by wagon. Alletta Parker';s brother, Thomas Giles French, and her sister Eunice accompanied her from Vermont, and Asa Parker joined the party at Troy, New York. Giles French and Asa Parker, having heard of choice lands near Milwaukee, returned thither with the wagon that had conveyed the family to Pleasant Prairie.
After parting from his family at Whitehall Luther Parker, with horses and covered wagon and a small equipment of goods, set out for the same destination. The journey was long and arduous. The condition of the roads, or rather the lack of roads, at some stages of his progress was such that on many days he could look back at nightfall to the spot on which he had encamped the previous night. When he finally arrived at Alvin French's at Pleasant Prairie it was about the twentieth of July, and his family had long been awaiting him.
With characteristic energy he made a claim to land not far from Alvin French's, and made provision for the breaking of sod. Meanwhile, however, Asa Parker and Giles French had reported especially attractive lands about fifteen miles to the southwest of Milwaukee, where they had made claims, the former on the south half of the northeast quarter of section two in the town of Muskego, and the latter on the south half of the southeast quarter of the same section. Asa Parker's shake was at the site of the present Tess Corners, and Giles French's bark wigwam near a mineral spring about eighty rods to the west. After a short time at Pleasant Prairie Luther Parker mounted his horse and rode northward to view the country where his brother and brother-in-law had settled. With water power in mind, as was natural for one who was familiar with the upper waters of the Connecticut, he rode beyond them several miles to the west, found Little Muskego lake, explored it, discovered the outlet, and at the shore where it left the lake located a claim of three hundred and twenty acres, the south half of section nine, town five, range twenty, east.
In January, 1837, six months after their arrival in the West, the Parker family, husband, wife, one son, nine years old, and three daughter, Persis Euseba, Ellen Augusta, and Amanda Melvina, aged seven,, four and two years, moved into the log cabin which Luther Parker had constructed on the wooded south shore of the lake. Giles French and Asa Parker had settled before him, but were both in temporary quarters and without family. Another settler, named Fields, had erected a cabin in the neighborhood, but had not occupied it with his family until later in the winter. Luther Parker may therefore be recorded as the first permanent white settler in the township of Muskego.
The Parker family remained in the log cabin three years. In 1839 Mr. Parker sold his claim to Anson H. Taylor for $800, but continued to reside on it until the spring of 1840, when he occupied a two hundred and forty acre holding to the south of Giles French, which had been abandoned, the northeast quarter and the east half of the northwest quarter of section eleven. The Muskego lands in the neighborhood were varied; there were heavily wooded parts, oak openings, and meadows. Here he resided until his death in 1853.
Luther Parker's capacity to endure hardship and privation found its second opportunity for demonstration in the Wisconsin wilderness. The stern conditions of the pioneering life of that period are so well known that they require no description here. There was the usual cabin of logs, with chinks through which the wind blew and the snow sifted, and with the old-fashioned fireplace and the danger from fire that accompanied it. There was the hard work of clearing, and the laborious two-day trips to Milwaukee by Indian trail, for the sack of flour and pork and other necessities to supplement the scant product of the first years of tillage. There was the need of skill and patience in the slow making by and of everything that there was no money to purchase. The shoemaker's kit which he had used during his apprentice days at Stoneham Mr. parker kept and used all his life.
There was the lack of medical conveniences, too, but not the lack of death. Little Amanda Melvina, the child born September 8, 1835, at Indian Stream, died of the fever in the Muskego cabin on August 8, 1838, and was buried on the shore of the lake. The grave is within the limits of the present Muskego Lake resort, but has long since been obscured.
Luther Parker's capacity for leadership, also, was displayed again in the new country. His natural ability, as well as the education he had received at Temple, Stoneham, and New Ipswich, his teacher's experience at Stratford and elsewhere, served him here as well as at Indian Stream, and the varied experiences in affairs through which he had passed in northern New Hampshire fitted him for similar experiences in Wisconsin.
In the land sale of 1839, which took place at public auction in Milwaukee, Mr. parker was entrusted by all the squatter sovereigns of the townships of Franklin and Muskego with the bidding in of their claims. The settlers, who were now first to acquire actual title, had previously met and agreed not to bid against each other, and it was also well understood that no bidding by land speculators was to be tolerated. Mr. Parker appeared in the auction room with a list of the neighbors' holdings in the hand, and as each holding was described by the auctioneer, he simply said, "$1.25 per acre," and at the close of each day's sale the certificates were made out and the cash paid over. Only one attempt at bidding by a speculator was made during his attendance on the sale. The bidder, who wished to get possession of an improved holding, found himself so boisterously jostled and crowded that, though it was all seemingly accidental, he was glad to be allowed to leave the room.
Mr. Parkers considerable legal knowledge was also called into action in the drawing in the contracts and other papers, and in court work. he was justice of peace for several terms, and tried many cases, and frequently conducted the cases of his neighbors in court when not in office. His law library was a scant book or two-Blackston's Commentaries, Cowan's Treaties, and the New Hampshire form book-but they served large purpose in those days.
He was a leader also in the educational affairs of the new settlement. The first school in Muskego came into existence in the fall of 1839, a little to the south of Tess Corners, and was built and supported by those of the settlers who were interested. here is the letter of one of the pupils, Luther Parker's son Charles, which affords a vivid picture of the manner of education in the wilderness:
"The schoolhouse was 14 x 16, of logs covered with shakes. It had two windows, rough green oak boards for floor, and seats of basswood slabs. On each side, where a window lighted a desk-like shelf against the wall, sat the larger pupils, with slates or writing-books, on a long bench, their backs to the teacher and the school. A little sheet-iron, barrel -shaped stove did the heating. It was brought all the way from New Hampshire by my father in his covered wagon, and donated to the school by him. The building and the school were a private enterprise, a free contribution by the few families, mostly New Englanders, who had children. It stood a little south of the present Tess Corners, and was built in the fall of 1839. Ellen, Persis, and I had to go two miles, as we lived the farthest west of the settlement. A Miss Hale taught the winter school. She was paid the generous sum of two dollars per week, and boarded round. All did their best the week the schoolma'am was with them; but there was no butter or milk in most places. Honey was substituted for both.
Two or three years after the town was organized the first school district. Sometimes a fairly qualified teacher was secured; often otherwise. One was an old man from New Hampshire; my father and he had been schoolmates. he was well qualified for the work, but we soon began to wonder why he went out every half hour, and boylike, we began to hunt; and one day-it was snowing-as soon as he returned from one of his outings, I asked to go out, and following his tracks, found hidden in the snow a pint whiskey flask. Then the borch 11, 1635, in the expedition of the ships Suzan and Ellin, fitted out by Sir Richard Saltonstall, and landed at Lynn, Massachusetts. The Lynn annals recording his coming" "1635. Came this year, Thomas Parker, a farmer, who embarked at London, March 11, 1635."
Thomas Parker resided for several years at Lynn, the owner of forty acres of land, and in 1639 moved to Lynn Village, later called Redding (1644), still later South Redding (1813), and finally Wakefield (1868). Here he became deacon of the Redding church, which was built about 1644, its first minister being ordained ... pages missing.
married Polly Nicols in 1805; Lucinda (July 17, 1786), who married Samuel Pratt.
Joshua Parker and Polly Taylor (born November 11, 1774) were married in Redding on November 13, 1796, by Peter Sanborn. Their sons were five: Joshua ( February 16, 1798-July, 1878), who enlisted in the War of 1812; Luther (December 18, 1800-June 15, 1853), the subject of this biography; Ebenezer (October 19, 1804-February 3, 1805); Edwin (June 30, 1807-July 7, 1830); Asa (September 17, 1810-May 22, 1895). Between February 16, 1798, the date of Joshua's birth, and December 18, when Luther was born, the Parker family moved from Redding, Massachusetts, to Temple, New Hampshire. Joshua Parker's death occurred at Temple in June, 1855, and that of his wife in September, 1856.
Luther Parker received his early education in the common school at Temple. Other than that there is no information regarding his boyhood.
About the year 1816 he went to Stoneham, Massachusetts, near his father's former home, and learned the shoemaker's trade, being apprenticed in one of the numerous shops of that time, when nearly every farmer kept a shop where he spent the spare hours of the winter months and other periods of farm inactivity. Not content with the prospect of following this occupation through life, he returned to Temple and attended the academy at New Ipswich, not far distant. On the completion of his studies there he taught district school in the neighborhood of Albany, New York.
In 1825 and 1826 Luther Parker taught school at Stratford, New Hampshire, somewhat south of Colebrook, Cob's county, on the Connecticut river, nearly opposite and not far from Brunswick, Vermont. Here he met Alletta French, one of the ten children of Thomas Giles French of Brunswick. She was born on June 11, 1803 an had lived since her eighth or tenth year with the family of Squire Baldwin in Stratford, and was a pupil in Stratford school when Luther Parker became its Master
Luther Parker and Alletta French were married at Stratford on the 18th of February, 1827, and in the same year, probably soon after their union, settled on land in what was then usually known as the Indian Stream country. Here they remained until the spring of 1836.
CHAPTER 2-14
These chapters were not transcribed as it pertains to Luther's time at Indian Stream and does not pertain to Luther and Waukesha County.
Chapter 15
The Wisconsin Pioneer
Early in May, 1836, Luther Parker left Indian Stream for the wilderness of southeastern Wisconsin.
During the preceding year Alvin G. French of Brunswick, Vermont, a brother of Alletta French Parker, had settled on the virgin acres of the new country in what became the township of Pleasant Prairie, a few miles west of the present city of Kenosha, a settlement then known as Pike River. The effect upon a son of rugged Indian Stream of Mr. French's accounts of those beautiful tracts of soil, generous and peaceful, unencumbered by heavy timber, and yet not treeless, may easily be imagined. Add to this the turbulence through which Luther Parker had passed in New Hampshire, the still surviving uncertainty as to whether the triumph of the cause at Indian Stream and the advent of peace.
"Ten years of my life gone for nothing!" he is said to have exclaimed, as he drove out of the Indian Stream country by the road that led over the hill to Clarksville and the southwest.
Setting his affairs in order as far as possible by leaving his stock in trade, lands, and the major part of his other belongings in the hands of a friend in Clarksville and of his father in Temple, Luther Parker conveyed his family and scant goods by covered wagon as far as Whitehall, New York, on Lake Champlain, where he started them on their journey by anal through Troy to Buffalo, from Buffalo to Detroit by steamboat, from Detroit to Milwaukee through the lakes by schooner, and from Milwaukee to Pleasant Prairie by wagon. Alletta Parker';s brother, Thomas Giles French, and her sister Eunice accompanied her from Vermont, and Asa Parker joined the party at Troy, New York. Giles French and Asa Parker, having heard of choice lands near Milwaukee, returned thither with the wagon that had conveyed the family to Pleasant Prairie.
After parting from his family at Whitehall Luther Parker, with horses and covered wagon and a small equipment of goods, set out for the same destination. The journey was long and arduous. The condition of the roads, or rather the lack of roads, at some stages of his progress was such that on many days he could look back at nightfall to the spot on which he had encamped the previous night. When he finally arrived at Alvin French's at Pleasant Prairie it was about the twentieth of July, and his family had long been awaiting him.
With characteristic energy he made a claim to land not far from Alvin French's, and made provision for the breaking of sod. Meanwhile, however, Asa Parker and Giles French had reported especially attractive lands about fifteen miles to the southwest of Milwaukee, where they had made claims, the former on the south half of the northeast quarter of section two in the town of Muskego, and the latter on the south half of the southeast quarter of the same section. Asa Parker's shake was at the site of the present Tess Corners, and Giles French's bark wigwam near a mineral spring about eighty rods to the west. After a short time at Pleasant Prairie Luther Parker mounted his horse and rode northward to view the country where his brother and brother-in-law had settled. With water power in mind, as was natural for one who was familiar with the upper waters of the Connecticut, he rode beyond them several miles to the west, found Little Muskego lake, explored it, discovered the outlet, and at the shore where it left the lake located a claim of three hundred and twenty acres, the south half of section nine, town five, range twenty, east.
In January, 1837, six months after their arrival in the West, the Parker family, husband, wife, one son, nine years old, and three daughter, Persis Euseba, Ellen Augusta, and Amanda Melvina, aged seven,, four and two years, moved into the log cabin which Luther Parker had constructed on the wooded south shore of the lake. Giles French and Asa Parker had settled before him, but were both in temporary quarters and without family. Another settler, named Fields, had erected a cabin in the neighborhood, but had not occupied it with his family until later in the winter. Luther Parker may therefore be recorded as the first permanent white settler in the township of Muskego.
The Parker family remained in the log cabin three years. In 1839 Mr. Parker sold his claim to Anson H. Taylor for $800, but continued to reside on it until the spring of 1840, when he occupied a two hundred and forty acre holding to the south of Giles French, which had been abandoned, the northeast quarter and the east half of the northwest quarter of section eleven. The Muskego lands in the neighborhood were varied; there were heavily wooded parts, oak openings, and meadows. Here he resided until his death in 1853.
Luther Parker's capacity to endure hardship and privation found its second opportunity for demonstration in the Wisconsin wilderness. The stern conditions of the pioneering life of that period are so well known that they require no description here. There was the usual cabin of logs, with chinks through which the wind blew and the snow sifted, and with the old-fashioned fireplace and the danger from fire that accompanied it. There was the hard work of clearing, and the laborious two-day trips to Milwaukee by Indian trail, for the sack of flour and pork and other necessities to supplement the scant product of the first years of tillage. There was the need of skill and patience in the slow making by and of everything that there was no money to purchase. The shoemaker's kit which he had used during his apprentice days at Stoneham Mr. parker kept and used all his life.
There was the lack of medical conveniences, too, but not the lack of death. Little Amanda Melvina, the child born September 8, 1835, at Indian Stream, died of the fever in the Muskego cabin on August 8, 1838, and was buried on the shore of the lake. The grave is within the limits of the present Muskego Lake resort, but has long since been obscured.
Luther Parker's capacity for leadership, also, was displayed again in the new country. His natural ability, as well as the education he had received at Temple, Stoneham, and New Ipswich, his teacher's experience at Stratford and elsewhere, served him here as well as at Indian Stream, and the varied experiences in affairs through which he had passed in northern New Hampshire fitted him for similar experiences in Wisconsin.
In the land sale of 1839, which took place at public auction in Milwaukee, Mr. parker was entrusted by all the squatter sovereigns of the townships of Franklin and Muskego with the bidding in of their claims. The settlers, who were now first to acquire actual title, had previously met and agreed not to bid against each other, and it was also well understood that no bidding by land speculators was to be tolerated. Mr. Parker appeared in the auction room with a list of the neighbors' holdings in the hand, and as each holding was described by the auctioneer, he simply said, "$1.25 per acre," and at the close of each day's sale the certificates were made out and the cash paid over. Only one attempt at bidding by a speculator was made during his attendance on the sale. The bidder, who wished to get possession of an improved holding, found himself so boisterously jostled and crowded that, though it was all seemingly accidental, he was glad to be allowed to leave the room.
Mr. Parkers considerable legal knowledge was also called into action in the drawing in the contracts and other papers, and in court work. he was justice of peace for several terms, and tried many cases, and frequently conducted the cases of his neighbors in court when not in office. His law library was a scant book or two-Blackston's Commentaries, Cowan's Treaties, and the New Hampshire form book-but they served large purpose in those days.
He was a leader also in the educational affairs of the new settlement. The first school in Muskego came into existence in the fall of 1839, a little to the south of Tess Corners, and was built and supported by those of the settlers who were interested. here is the letter of one of the pupils, Luther Parker's son Charles, which affords a vivid picture of the manner of education in the wilderness:
"The schoolhouse was 14 x 16, of logs covered with shakes. It had two windows, rough green oak boards for floor, and seats of basswood slabs. On each side, where a window lighted a desk-like shelf against the wall, sat the larger pupils, with slates or writing-books, on a long bench, their backs to the teacher and the school. A little sheet-iron, barrel -shaped stove did the heating. It was brought all the way from New Hampshire by my father in his covered wagon, and donated to the school by him. The building and the school were a private enterprise, a free contribution by the few families, mostly New Englanders, who had children. It stood a little south of the present Tess Corners, and was built in the fall of 1839. Ellen, Persis, and I had to go two miles, as we lived the farthest west of the settlement. A Miss Hale taught the winter school. She was paid the generous sum of two dollars per week, and boarded round. All did their best the week the schoolma'am was with them; but there was no butter or milk in most places. Honey was substituted for both.
Two or three years after the town was organized the first school district. Sometimes a fairly qualified teacher was secured; often otherwise. One was an old man from New Hampshire; my father and he had been schoolmates. he was well qualified for the work, but we soon began to wonder why he went out every half hour, and boylike, we began to hunt; and one day-it was snowing-as soon as he returned from one of his outings, I asked to go out, and following his tracks, found hidden in the snow a pint whiskey flask. Then the boys had their fun. As the days passed he used to get rather the worse for the flask before the end of the day, and the boys began to cut up, until father, who was clerk, found out, and told him he must give up the whiskey or resign. it was a little better after that."--written at River Falls, Wis by Charles Durham Parker.
Chapter 16
The Territorial Legislature of 1846
In the election of 1845 Luther parker was chosen a member of the territorial legislature of Wisconsin, representing part of Milwaukee county, which then included what was to become Waukesha county. Its two branches were at that time called the council and assembly. With Luther Parker in the assembly where Samuel H. Barstow of Prairieville, later called Waukesha, and W.H. Thomas of Lisbon. In the council were J.H. Kimball of Prairieville, and Curtis Reed of Summit. Henry Dodge was governor.
The legislature met on January 5, 1846, with thirteen members in the council and twenty-six in the assembly. On Wednesday, January 7, the Speaker announced his committees. Luther parker was appointed a member of the committees on schools and on engrossed bills, and chairman of the committee on agriculture and manufactures.
On the 14th Mr. Parker presented the petition of Thomas Steele and thirty-two others, praying for an act to amend an act to authorize the commissioners of highways for the towns of Genesee and Maquango (Mukwonago) to lay out and alter a territorial road named therein. On the 16th he moved that the bill to incorporate the city of Milwaukee be referred to a select committee consisting of the members from Milwaukee county. On the same day he also presented the petition of H. Van Vlick and thirty-six others. inhabitants of Milwaukee county, asking for a division of said county, and also four other petitions of other inhabitants on the same subject.
remainder of this chapter omitted
Chapter 17
The Last Years
The record of Luther Parker's life from 1846 to 1853 is scant. Such as it is, it is indicative of the usual activities of the pioneer who is possessed of more than ordinary ability and experience. The raising and marketing of his farm produce, the improvement of his estate, the education of his children, the administration of business, public and private, for himself and such neighbors as invoked his aid, the political effort natural to a man of conscience and pronounced convictions-such was the content of his life, so far as outward event may show, during its last half dozen years.
In October, 1846, Luther Parker's name appears among the grand jurors of Waukesha county, and in 1849 and 1851 Asa Parker was among the petit jurors.
Polically, Luther Parker was a Democrat until the rise of the Free Soil party, in the organization of which in Wisconsin he took a prominent part. He supported Van Buren in the campaign of 1848, and in 1852 supported John Parker Hale of New Hampshire, himself of Parker blood, and a member of the Indian Stream commission of 1836.
In 1851 Luther Parker was elected a member of the county board from Muskego. The board met on November 11 at Waukesha. Andrew E. Elmore was chosen chairman, and Luther Parker and Mr. Miner were the tellers who announced his election. Mr. Parker was appointed on the committees on the treasury, on justices' and constables accounts and on the support of the poor, being chairman of the second. His name appears in the minutes of November 13, 14, 15, 18, 19, 20, 21, and 22, in connection with the reports of these committees and other business. The character of his reports and motions indicates an attitude of painstaking economoy in the administration of the affairs of the county.
In 1848, during the spring and fall terms, Mr. Parker's son Charles was in attendance at the Normal Classical Institute at Waukesha, conducted by Elihu Enos and John W. Sterling, the latter of whom was called the same year to the chair of mathematics, natural philosophy, and astronomy in the University of Wisconsin, where he remained until his death in 1884. During the following winter Charles Parker taught school in Muskego.
On the twenty-sixth of August, 1849, occurred the death of Alletta Parker, of typhoid fever, at the age of forty-six. She was interred in Durham Hill cemetery, several miles to the south of the Parker estate.
The autumn of the same year Ellen and Persis Parker attended Mrs. Baker's Female Seminary at Waukesha. Prior to 1848 the education of the Parker children had been limited to the district school near Tess Corners.
Mrs. Baker's Female Seminary is thus advertised in the <i>Waukesha Advocate</i> of April 19, 1848:
Waukesha Female Seminary
Mrs. Baker Principal
Mrs. Baker has now closed her second term and 4th quarter, and having been sustained beyond her most sanguine expecations, she would say to her numerous friends and patrons that she will open her school again on the 27th of March. People having daughters to send to school ay feel assured that pupils committed to her charge will receive the same care and attention as those of her own family, and she will endeavor as far as possible to supply to them the protection and comforts of home. wishing her school to become a permanent one, she will gather around it all the appliances requiredto give tone and finish to the education of ayoung lady as fast as the growing interests of the school require it. Returning many thanks for past favors, she hopes by her experience in teaching, and by her unremitting exertions, to secure a liberal share of public patronage.
The academic year will be divided into two terms fo 22 weeks each, and four quarters of 11 weeks each. The first term and first quarter of the ensuing year will commence on the 27th day of March 1848.
Departments -terms per qr.
Primary: first Principles of Orthography and Reading $1.00
With the above, Emerson's First part of Artithmetic $1.50
Middle: Orthography, Reading, Geography, Arithmetic, Grammar, Writing, Primary History and Botony $2.00
Highest: Natural Philosophy, History, Ancient and Modern, Botany, Astonomy, Chemistry, Rhetoric, and Physiology #3.00
Extras: Music and Piano Forte, including use of instrument $8.00
French and Latin languages, each $5.00
Drawing $2.00
Painting $3.00
Ornamental Needle Work $2.00
Worsted Flowers, Baskets, Birds, & c $1.00
Moral and Intellectual Philosophy, Logic, Criticism, Alegebra, and Geometry $4.00
There will be no deductions except in cases of long continued illness. Pupils from abroad can be boarded at the Institution at a reasonable price-Produce taken at market price in part payment for board if paid in advance. There will be charged during the winter 12 1/2 cents per quarter additional for fuel.
In the fall of 1849 Charles Parker went east to attend New Ipswich Academy, where his father had once been a pupil. Discontinuing his study there in the spring in order to supply a ten weeks' vacancy at Davis village, near by, he returned to Wisconsin in the autumn of 1850, taught the following winter at Oak Creek, and from 1851 to 1853 at Hartland, spending the summers on the Muskego farm with his father. Ellen and Persis Parker also taught in Muskego after there year at Mrs. Baker;s seminary.
In April 1850, Luther Parker was married to Susan G. Goodman. From this union there was one child, Mary s. Parker, born January 17, 1852.
On June 28, 1852, in the hope of regaining his failing health, Luther Parker went on a journey to the scenes of his earlier life in New England. During his visit to Indian Stream, though they had long since became outlawed, he discharged several obliations which he had been unale to provide for on his departure, further than was possible by the leaving of his land and goods in charge of relatives and firends for the purpose. His titles to the Indian Stream lands had been allowed to lapse, and the mill had been burned several years before his return.
Mr. Parker's health was not improved by his journey. He continued to grow worse, and on June 15, 1853, died. He lies beside Alletta Parker in the Durham Hill cemetery. The inscription of their single stone records:
LUTHER PARKER
died
June 15, 1853
Aged 53 years
What thou art, I was. What I am, thou soon wilt be.
Also his wife
ALLETTA
died
August 26, 1849
Aged 47 years
Those who knew her best
loved her most
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