Annie Elizabeth Carney Parker

Annie Elizabeth Carney Parker,

An Autobiography[1]

My maternal grandparents, William Penn and Martha Anne Browne, moved from Tama City, Iowa, to the small town of Gilman, Marshall Co., Iowa in the year 1876. They lived in the house half way up High St., which my father later purchased, and still later has been called the “Pence House.” An 18 year old daughter, Annie, died in this home in 1879.

About two years afterward they moved a few houses south into a house located two doors north of the Congregational Church and later called the “Dunkle House.” It was during the years 1879 and 1880 that mother, Martha Emma, 2nd daughter of this couple (b. 12/26/1851) was teaching the first grade in the public school of Gilman. She had a beautiful alto voice, and was a member of the Cong. Church choir.

John M. Carney, born Oct. 10th, 1836 at Andover, Mass., an insurance agent of Gilman, was also a member of this choir, having a fine tenor voice. He had lost his young wife, Lizzie Bliss Carney, in Dec., 1875. From the pleasure of singing together, and attending choir parties, these two became acquainted and soon were keeping company. This friendship turned into deep devotion and they became engaged.

On April 30, 1880 occurred the marriage of my parents, Martha Emma Browne, age 29, and John M. Carney, age 44 in the home of her parents on High St. in Gilman at 8:00 PM. She finished out that spring of 1880 as the first grade teacher.

This Carney couple stayed on in the home of her parents, the Dunkle House, until after my birth, which happened on Feb. 17th, 1881.

When I was six months of age my father purchased the house farther north in which her parents had first lived. In this home, later called the Pence House, I spent my early childhood, and I have very many memories of the joy of happy family life, and childhood play with brothers and sisters. I was the first of six children, all of whom, except myself, were born in this house until the last beautiful baby, Frederick Stafford.

We were Annie Elizabeth (Bessie), Ralph John, May 29th, 1882, Earl Penn, Jr., Jan. 31st, 1884, Myra Eugenie, Sept., 1885, Frances Kate (Pansy), May 24th 1887, and Frederick Stafford, Feb. 29th, 1892. He was named for two uncles, mother’s brother, Fred Browne and the husband of father’s sister, Ira Stafford Peck.

I remember the fall morning on which Ralph and I first started to school. I was kept at home until I was six years of age in order that Ralph would be old enough to go into the first grade at the same time. Mother did not like me to go alone, as the walk to school was long. She always worried about each one of us having to cross the railroad tracks.

What excitement we three older ones of 4, 5 and 6 had in a game we planned ourselves of running up the stairs in our barn, into the hay mow, and jumping out an open door onto a pile of straw in the alley below. In the fall of the year when many dead leaves fell on the lawns we delighted in raking them into ridges and piles in the shape of rooms in a house. In them we played keeping house, with Ralph and I as mother and father with the three younger ones as our children.

I was seven years of age when baby sister Frances Kate, called Pansy, as mother said her sweet little face looked just like a pansy blossom, came to our family and quite grown up enough to take her out in her buggy for little rides on the front side walk.

But my special care was our sweet little Myra Eugenie, whom we called “Genie.” She was very weak, and little, when born and it seemed she would not live. Mother always thought that it was mainly because she herself had no strength and vitality to give her little one, having had three babies one after the other. Always little Genie was slow in development and growth, and so very late in learning to walk and talk. Her little ankles were so weak that father had to have her shoes fixed with braces on the sides to hold her ankles stiff. She was a beautiful little girl with blue eyes and blonde curly hair.

Little Genie had many sick spells with stomach trouble accompanied by spasms. Our doctor never could find what the real trouble was. They always set her back so that she must learn over again all the progress she had made. Mother and I were beside her little bed, in our sitting room, on the morning of her death. It was following a sick spell when she could keep no food on her stomach, and it seemed that she just very quietly gave up the struggle to live. My parents were constantly worried over her. When the end came, March 4th, 1892, at 11 AM, I ran to town to tell father at his office, then on to school to get Ralph and Earl. This happened in our last home in Gilman when Frederick was only a baby. At the time of her death she could talk but not plainly. I cared for her much of the time and was out of school a half year because I was needed so badly at home. I taught her to say many words and sentences and I remember the little song I taught her to sing – she would lisp it out:

Come, sister, come

Kiss me good night,

For I my evening prayer have said,

I’m tired now and sleepy too.

So put me in my little bed.

This delicate little sister never grew larger than a normal child of three years. We made her a beautiful white shroud of white soft crepe, and ribbons, and laid her like a sleeping angel in her tiny white satin bed, in her white velvet casket. She rests in Prairie View Cemetery beside father and mother.

In July, 1891 mother took her five little ones on a train trip to Franklin, Nebraska to visit her parents and her sister Kate, who was married to Clint Hyatt, and with their two little boys Adrian and Garth was living at Alma, Nebraska. We were Bessie, 10; Ralph, 9; Earl, 6; Genie, 5; and baby Pansy, 3. Father came out to bring us home. How glad we all were to see him. I lost two hats on that trip – one a wide brimmed white leghorn straw, flew out the train window, and a new one mother bought to replace it was blown off into the fields on a wild ride with a team and buckboard driven by cousin Fred Austin from Franklin to Alma.

Memories of this early home are vivid in my mind. One spot was such a joy to me. It was my private play place, with my dolls, in the little attic room over our kitchen.

I remember the day when Ralph broke his arm. He was rolling on a round well-tubing, lying in the back yard, it rolled over and he fell off it.

On my 10th birthday, in Feb. of 1891 a group of neighbor children and school friends were invited by Mamma for a birthday party. My special little boy friend was James Hartman, who lived across the street from our church. He brought me a separate gift of a string of red beads. How I did cherish those beads! All the rest of the children put their money together and purchased my gold band ring which I have worn always and still wear it. It was used in the ceremony of marriage at my wedding.

In the summer of 1891, while mother and her brood of five were visiting at Franklin, Nebraska, father purchased our last Gilman home, located at the north end of High St. As soon as we all returned home he took us to see the new house. What joy and excitement there was. Carpenters were at work building the north addition to the house. What fun we children had running and climbing the unfinished rooms. After moving into this home father sold our organ and purchased for mother piano, which she loved.

For ten precious years this house with spacious grounds surrounding was my beloved home. We five, Bessie, Ralph, Earl, Pansy and Ted spent our growing-up years here, and each one as he grew toward adulthood went through the grades and the high school of the Gilman school, taking part in all the programs and parties of the school and community. My memory turns back to many times when I stood on the stage of the Gilman Opera House and sang, or recited a selection.

I must mention, too, how large a part our Congregational Church had in the lives of all of us. Father was superintendant of the Sunday School for many years and our family was connected with about every activity of the church, and Sunday School, from furnishing food for socials to reciting in the programs and singing in the choir. I began to sing soprano with the church choir at 15.

The last member to come to the John Carney family was our beautiful brown curly-haired little boy, Frederick, whom the family and friends have always called Ted. He was blue eyed, and perfect, as the last child of a family so often is.

I remember the morning well, two weeks following my eleventh birthday when father took all of us children into mother’s bed room and told us he had a new baby brother to show us. We all fell in love with him then and there, and still we love him deeply; those who are left of us, although he is now a middle-aged man, with a family of his own. His brown baby hair turned to golden blonde, with beautiful long curls until they were cut at the age of 4 years. He sang his first song on the church platform just before they were cut off, and mother saved them in her trunk for many years. When Ted was two months of age we nearly lost him from a serious form of whooping cough. I stood by his carriage day after day watching to grab him up when he could not get a breath and became blue in the face.

It was at a Christian Endeavor social at the Parker family home, 4 ½ miles south east of Gilman, in 1897, that I first started keeping company with the boy to whom I would later be married. Rob Parker was attending Grinnell College by that time, but on the night of the party he was at home helping and sister entertain. A bad electrical and wind storm came up, which frightened us all, so that they took all the guests to the cellar for safety. It was a surprise to me, and very thrilling when the young man of the house, and a college man, selected me to help down the cellar stairs and stay with, through this experience. After it was over he took me in town to my home and from then on I was his special girl. Our courtship was a very beautiful and happy time.

Our real engagement began at Christmas time of 1898. Rob was at my home for dinner that day, and while I stood by the cupboard in mother’s kitchen, he took hold of my hand when I was not looking and put on my finger my dear little diamond engagement ring. I have loved it ever since that day, and still wear it along with the cherished gold band.

Following that memorable Christmas through the spring of 1899 my fiancée was back at Grinnell College. He came to see me very often and we wrote to each other almost every day. The very greatest thrills of my life were the many times that spring that he had me come to the college to go with him to a program or a party. I was then still in high school and felt proud to put it over my school girl friends by going with a college boy.

By the fall of that year when he went back to college as a senior, he was so anxious that I go to Grinnell too that he helped me get my tuition from the College Scholarship Fund. I entered Grinnell Academy at the fall semester of 1899. Our Gilman school was not accredited for college entrance. He returned the borrowed money to the Scholarship Fund after our marriage.

What very wonderful experiences he and I had together through that fall of ’99 and the spring of 1900. They were all too numerous, and precious, to write out here. By that June he was a college graduate and I had a diploma as a graduate of the Grinnell Academy. I attended with him almost all of the senior activities as the picnics, parties and programs.

I went home to Gilman long enough to make my graduation dress, which was of white voile sprinkled with blue embroidery flowers.

When September of that year 1900 came I went back to Grinnell College for the freshman year. Rob was working that year at the towns of Malcom and Brooklyn, east of Grinnell, selling telephone stock to farmers and building the first farm telephone lines in that part of Iowa. He followed this work through the 1901, coming often to Grinnell to take me to games and entertainments. One thrilling trip was to Des Moines to see a Grinnell – Drake football game.

Mother was not well so I left college to stay at home and help her with the younger children. By Christmas time of 1901 we had set the day for our wedding, and on the last day of that year, December 31st, 1901, Reverend Charles L. Hammond joined in marriage Annie Elizabeth Carney and Robert Lavender Parker at her family home in Gilman, Iowa.

The night of our wedding was cold, and snow covered the ground, glistening and sparkling in the full golden light of a full moon. Only our immediate families, beside a few friends of mine attended the ceremony which took place in the bow window of our parents’ living room. The gold band ring of my 10th birthday served in the single ring ceremony.

Another dear friend, Effie Wylie of Grinnell, with whom I lived through my first year in college, played Mendelssohn’s Wedding March on mother’s piano as I came down the stairs and joined my beloved before our minister. I wore the dress which I had made for my wedding. It was of a delicate pearl grey wool cashmere, with front and sleeve puffs of pale blue velvet.

My closest girl chum, Effie Ohl, had charge of serving the refreshments consisting of little sandwiches, grape juice and the bride’s wedding cake which I made myself.

On New Years’ Day, 1902, the Christian Endeavor of our church gave us a very nice reception at the parsonage. There had been an all day reception of the many Parker relatives at the Parker home that day. Will Parker, brother of the groom, came after the bride and groom and bride’s family in the morning of that New Year, and all had a wonderful time and a grand dinner. My new mother-in-law was an excellent cook. I was very excited to be a bride and the center of attention.

My 21st birthday came six weeks following my marriage. At the evening reception I was prevailed upon to sing two solos for the guests; Bendemeer’s “Steam,” and “Just for Today.” The guests at the reception gave us silver tea spoons, my family gave silver knives and forks, and the Parkers gave us money for a wedding trip to Chicago. I had never been in a city and those two weeks in Chicago were the most exciting and thrilling of my life. My Uncle Fred (Browne) and Aunt Mary gave as a wedding gift very lovely table cloth and a dozen large napkins of heavy white damask. Rob was so anxious to show me all the sights of the city. We went to see a play starring Mrs. Patrick Campbell.[2]