Sarah C. Parker (Died June 5,1900)

PARKER, PEARSE

Posted By: Marilyn Holmes (email)
Date: 5/10/2008 at 08:53:42

Grinnell Stewart Library Obituaries online.

A TRIBUTE TO MRS. L.F. PARKER

A noble and beautiful earthly life ended on Tuesday afternoon when Mrs. Sarah C. Parker entered upon the heavenly life. Her long time of suffering and weariness has changed into an eternity in which there shall be no more pain, but a rest that remaineth.

Seventy-two years ago Sarah Candace Pearse was born in Sudbury, Addison Co., Vermont. She was of puritan ancestry, and her family was interesting in a high degree. An intellectual and christian ideal was a very intense factor in the family life. This love of education led the father to build up the home schools, and to make use of more distant advantages for his children.

Anti-slavery and temperance were household topics of conversation, and the children became possessed of strong convictions concerning them. Missionaries were frequent and welcome visitors in that house, and the children believed in prayer and effort for the conversion of the world. Music was such a part of the family life that parents and children seemed to have a song adapted to every circumstance from the (matin?) song that waked the children to the evening hymn that sent them to retirement. This singing not only beautified and graced their daily life but enobled it, because of the high motive and religious thought of which that music was the expression. The foundation thought upon which this family of four brothers and sisters were reared, was that they were walking in the sight of God and their lives were to be a loving, intelligent and constant service to others. This conviction remained with all the children through life.

When Sarah Candace Pearse left her home to attend school at Castleton Seminary and afterwards at Oberlin, her beautiful character was already formed, and these two institutions but refined, cultivated and strengthened it. Her love of music and ability as a singer, placed her at once in the choir at Oberlin, and her clear soprano voice--easily taking high C--put her at the head of that choir of one hundred singers, and she took chief soprano parts in all the fine oratorio concerts that were given in Oberlin at that time. She was a teacher also while in the college as a student, and interrupted her college course to teach two years in the high schools of Cincinnati, where she was offered the best place in those schools that had ever been offered a woman; but she returned to Oberlin and graduated in 1851, in the same class with Professor Parker, Colonel Cooper, and General and Governor Cox and others whose names are well known. She afterwards taught with excellent success in the seminary at Castleton, Vermont, where she had been a student, and at Willoughby Seminary in Willoughby, Ohio. In her later days it was a pleasure to her to meet these former pupils and to hear them express their gratitude and affection for her.

In 1853 she was married to Professor L.F. Parker, in the more recent home near Oberlin, Ohio. It was an ideal wedding on a pleasant summer's day--with little tables spread for refreshments placed on the lawn. The young couple went at once to Brownsville, Pennsyvania, where they taught in the public schools, and wherever they resided Mrs. Parker taught with her husband and sometimes in his place, as when at Iowa City she taught his history class during his absence in Europe. She also taught history in Iowa College, and for seven years was Lady Principal. It was no perfunctory service with her. She put the best of herself into it, and strove to awaken and develop in the minds of the young women--and young men also--of the college ideals and purposes that should elevate their own lives and benefit others. She was a true friend to each individual, taking them into her home, helping them physically and practically, but her chief purpose was to bring out of mind and spirit the best that was within them.

Mrs. Parker loved the beautiful in nature and in art, and her trip to Europe as well as other visits to the mountains and seashore were enjoyed by her to a very unusual degree. She had a calm exterior. Comparative strangers may have thought her precise and reserved. Instead of this, she possessed a wealth of love, and among special friends she delighted in giving and receiving tokens of affection.

We can easily trace her love of missions to that early home training, and while all her life was truly a missionary life in its service to others, yet her distinctive work for the Bohemians in Iowa City and her years of strong and efficient service as Iowa State Secretary of Woman's Work for women in foreign lands, began twenty-four years ago.