February 17, 1920

MRS. ELIZABETH GRAY PARKER

Daughter of Martin & Nancy Anna Geisler -Gray

WELL KNOWN PIONEER WOMAN DIES

WAS ONE OF FEW PERSONS WHO DARED TO STAY

IN HOWELL COUNTY DURING CIVIL WAR

Photo & Obituary

Courtesy Of  Maxine (Gray-Parker Descendant)

Submitted by Shirley Dawson (Descendant of  Gray & Coffee Family)

Obituary

       Mrs. Elizabeth Parker, 80  years old, died at her home five  miles south of West Plains yesterday morning.   Death was due to senility.     Mrs. Parker, who was one of the oldest pioneer residents of Howell County, was the mother of John and James Parker, who live  a few miles south of West Plains. Tom Parker, a step son also  lives south of town.   The Parkers were among the earliest settlers Howell county.  Coming here from Vichey Springs, Mo., several years before the Civil War, Mrs. Parker and her late husband John Parker, settled on a homestead south of West Plains, where they reared a large  family.     During the Civil War Howell county was a hot bed of skirmishing troops and bushwhackers.  West Plains at the beginning of the war  was a town of one-hundred and fifty or two hundred people, all of  whom fled to places of safety, however, and there were but a few persons who were brave enough to remain within the county.  Mrs.  Parker was one of those few.  Her husband and her brothers enlisted  in the Union Army, and she and her small children remained on the homestead, where she fought loneliness, danger and privation, without aid.

    Besides rearing her own family, Mrs. Parker later reared six motherless Grandsons, all but one of whom are now still living.  They are Walter, Albert, Fred and John Dold of West Plains, and Martin Dold of Wichita Falls, Texas.  One of the Grandsons, Fred  Dold, returned only last week after an absence of nearly 2 years, having been in the military hospitals of France, England and the United States since the battle of the Argonne Forest, in which he was wounded. 

    Funeral services for the aged woman are being held this afternoon and burial will take place at Evergreen Cemetery.