MERVIN PARKER
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More than a hundred years ago George Washington said that agriculture is the most useful as well as the most honorable occupation of man, and in the years which have since been added to the cycle of the centuries none has more fully demonstrated this truth than the present age, when so much depends upon successful crop production in furnishing food supplies to the armies of America and her allies. Actively engaged in general farming on section 18. Union township, Worth county, Mervin Parker most wisely and successfully directs his interests.
He was born in Columbia county, Wisconsin, on the 25th of April, 1857, and is a son of Frank and Jane (Moore) Parker, the former a native of Maine, while the latter was born in Ohio. They were married in Columbia county, Wisconsin, to which place the mother removed with her parents during her girlhood days, while the father arrived in that locality when a young man of twenty-one years. For several years after his removal to that district he taught the Watertown school and subsequently he turned his attention to the photographic art, conducting a gallery in Watertown for a number of years. Later he engaged in farming on his own account and in 1864 he removed to Iowa and purchased sixty-five acres of what has since been the homestead farm of the family. For this property he paid two dollars and a quarter per acre. With characteristic energy he began its development and continued the work of cultivation and improvement up to the time of his death. As the years passed he added more and more to the farm until at the time of his demise he was the owner of two hundred and sixty-five acres of excellent land. His political allegiance was given to the republican party, of which he was ever a stalwart champion, and he was elected to the office of county superintendent of schools, which position he acceptably filled for six years, doing much to further the interests of public education in the county. For five years he was a member of the board of county supervisors and he served for thirty years as justice of the peace, during which time he made a most excellent officer. He did everything in his power to prevent litigation, always persuading the litigants if possible to settle their differences out of court, but if a matter was brought to issue in the courts his decisions were ever found to be strictly fair and impartial, "winning him golden opinions from all sorts of people." His many excellent traits of character, his valuable public service and his progressiveness in business combined to make him one of the leading and substantial residents of Worth county, where he passed away in 1889, at the age of sixty-nine years. His widow long survived him and died in 1912, at the age of eighty-two years.
Mervin Parker was a little lad of but seven summers at the time of the removal of the family to Worth county, so that he was reared within its borders and acquired his early education in the district schools, while later he became a student in the Cedar Valley Seminary. When nineteen years of age he took up the profession of teaching and for twenty years was identified with educational work, imparting readily and clearly to others the knowledge that he had acquired. In fact he was regarded as one of the able educators of his section of the state and did much to further the progress of the schools.
On the 18th of June, 1885, Mr. Parker was united in marriage to Miss Josie Turner, of Union township, Worth county, a daughter of George and Mary (Hanson) Turner, who came to Iowa from Rockford, Illinois, in 1856 and settled in Mitchell, where Mr. Turner engaged in the furniture business until 1877. He then sold out and removed to Worth county, where he turned his attention to farming, being actively identified with agricultural interests for a number of years. He died January 24, 1908, at the age of seventy-seven, while his wife passed away October 24, 1902, at the age of seventy-one.
After his marriage Mr. Parker took charge of the home farm and in subsequent years acquired the property and is today the owner of two hundred and sixty-five acres of excellent land. For the past seventeen years he has rented much of his land and has given his entire attention to horticultural interests. He has sixteen acres planted to apples and he is regarded as an authority upon questions relative to fruit raising in this section of the country. He is a member of the Horticultural Society of Iowa and Minnesota. For a term of three years, covering 1917, 1918 and 1919, his orchard has been taken over by the State Agricultural College at Ames in order to here demonstrate what can be done through scientific spraying.
Mr. and Mrs. Parker have no children of their own but have reared an adopted son, Arthur R., who is now with the National Chemical Company and stationed at Los Angeles, California. In politics Mr. Parker is a republican but has never been an aspirant for political office. He and his wife are members of the Methodist Episcopal church of Plymouth and he is numbered among the highly educated and progressive citizens of Worth county whose labors have been an important element in promoting public progress and improvement. He has carried his researches and investigations far and wide into the realm of fruit raising and his efforts have contributed much to the development of horticultural interests in Worth county and throughout this section of the state.
SOURCE: HISTORY OF MITCHELL AND WORTH COUNTIES, IOWA, 1918, VOL. II; Pages 616 thru & 618
Transcription by Gordon Felland, 8/7/2006