Settlers

1870-1970
Illinois and Beyond

Elmer Clingan arrived in Lee County, Illinois in 1893 as an employee of the American Express shipping company. He settled in the town of Dixon where he found boarding in the home of Will and Melissa Herrick. Melissa was the eldest living daughter of Christopher and Mary Parker. There were eight daughters in the Parker family at this time, and soon Elmer married Melissa’s sister Alora Ellen Parker. Elmer and Alora joined the last link in the chain of families that began nearly 300 years earlier with the immigrants in Virginia and Massachusetts and ended with the settlers in Illinois. Their son William was born in 1896 followed by the birth of Mary Catharine Clingan three years later. Sadly, Alora died soon after Mary Catharine’s birth in 1899 and Elmer needed help caring for his two children.

Alora Ellen Parker Clingan (1874-1899)

Elmer Ellsworth Clingan (1861-1943)

William Clingan lived with his father in the Herrick home in Dixon, where Melissa was available to help as a caregiver, until Elmer was again transferred by his employer American Express to St. Louis, Missouri. Then another married Parker daughter, Martha “Minnie” Arminda, whose own two young children had recently died, fostered William through his high school years in neighboring Franklin Grove, Illinois.

Elmer Clingan and Son William

Baby Mary Catharine Clingan (1899)

Brother and Sister, William and Mary Clingan

After the death of Alora, Christopher and Mary Parker willingly took their granddaughter Mary Catharine into their family. They cared for her as an eleventh daughter in the little village of Nachusa, Illinois. This was Mother’s home throughout her childhood. She was educated in Nachusa’s one-room school house, but when there were no means to pay her high school tuition she left to go to Chicago to find training in dress-making. A few years later she married John Nelson, and the couple returned to Nachusa where their two daughters, Mary Catharine and Barbara Ann were born.

The story of Mary Catharine Clingan Nelson is not quite complete without telling something about how the Parker family arrived in the community of Nachusa. The little town was a place that meant so much to Mother. It was where she grew up with her beloved and energetic Parker family.

Christopher Parker’s grandparents, Abraham and Susannah Wimmer had migrated to Sangamon County, Illinois from Ohio and Indiana by 1830. They arrived about the time of the Black Hawk War, the last stand of the Native Americans in this territory. They were the first of his ancestry to settle in Ilinois after it had become a state.

Their daughter Martha and Abraham Parker who had been married in Ohio, eventually migrated to Indiana becoming the parents of seven children who all married and started their own families. Three married Beason siblings, two married Sisk sisters, and the two youngest Parker sons married Johnson sisters all in the close knit community of Kosciusko County, Indiana. One of the sons, Allen, served in the Indiana Infantry for the Union Army during the Civil War. His sister Mary’s husband, Harmon Beason, also served in the Union Army and was discharged from military service with a disability

Mary Parker and two daughters at an early family home in Nachusa.

At the close of the Civil War the other sons with their families started to explore Illinois. Several Parker families investigated the area of Lee County, Illinois. The oldest brother David owned land there as early as 1870 and then in a few years moved south to Champaign County where he settled and reared a large family of at least nine children. His sister Susannah Enyart with her husband Andrew and family also appeared in the 1870 Lee County census but soon returned to Cass County Indiana, where Susannah cared for her now widowed mother Martha Wimmer Parker. Daniel and his family moved on to Clark County, Iowa after a brief stay in Ogle County, Illinois.

Christopher Cyrus Parker and Mary Johnson (c1875)

Christopher Parker and his brother Ephraim arrived with their growing families in northern Lee County, Illinois in 1869. These brothers had married sisters, Mary and Rachael Johnson. It is probable that Mary’s and Rachael’s brother Joseph Johnson also came to Nachusa, Illinois with his family at this time. Ephraim and Rachael soon settled and reared their family in DeKalb where Ephraim was employed by the Northwestern Railroad.

Christopher was employed in Nachusa to work on the westward expanding railroad. He also tended his own garden and orchard in Nachusa. Christopher and Mary Parker enjoyed 69 years of marriage, 62 of them in the tiny Lee County community. Four of their daughters were born in Indiana, their only son died at birth in Illinois. All the daughters except two lived their entire lives in Illinois, most of them in Lee County.

Malvina Jane was born in Kosciusko County, Indiana. Just five days after the family had arrived in Illinois to make their future home she fell into a well and was drowned, a tragic beginning to the family’s life in a new state.

Melissa Alice Parker (1865-1947)

Melissa “Lizzie” Alice, was the adventurer. She became a nurse and operated her own nursing home for a few years before serving as a nurse in France during World War I. She was present for the births of two generations of Parker descendants including Mother, my sister, and me. After only a few years of marriage she separated from her husband without a formal divorce. Lizzie had an inquiring mind particularly when it came to religion. Over the years, she investigated several different religious trends such as Science of the Mind, New Thought, and Bahá’í teachings.

Martha Arminda Parker (1867-1953)

Martha “Minnie” Arminda was a survivor of childhood cholera. She married Thomas W. Brown who was born in Rhode Island and was a Civil War prisoner in the notorious Libby Prison. They lived in Franklin Grove, next to Lee County. They had two children who both died when they were very young and were buried in the Franklin Grove Cemetery. After the death of her husband, Minnie reared Mother’s brother William Clingan through his high school years. She eventually remarried.

Rachael Cora Parker (1868-1966)

Rachael “Codie” Cora married Oscar Eicholtz whose parent’s family had emigrated to Nachusa from Pennsylvania years earlier. Oscar and Codie lived for a number of years on a small farm on the edge of Nachusa and later in the imposing Eicholtz family home in the village. They had two children. Daughter Erma became the wife of my father’s close friend from Chicago (we will tell more of that story later). Their son Guy became a pharmacist in Chicago and died childless but his wife Mary as a widow cared for her mother-in-law and made the Eicholtz home in Nachusa her loving responsibility.

Permelia Delcenia Parker (1870-1904)

Permelia “Melia” Delcenia married Ura Kime, a farmer. They lived and reared their three sons on the farm adjacent to the village of Nachusa. One of their sons served in the United States Navy in both world wars. She died when the youngest son was still small and is buried in the Emmert “Dunkard” Cemetery among other Parkers and many Nachusa families.

Baby Etta Mae was born in 1875 and died at the age of only 18 months.

Retta May Parker (1877-1944)

Retta “Rettie” Mae was born only a year after the death of here sister Etta. She and her husband, Bill Weeden, lived in DeKalb and had seven children. At some point the family fell into distressful circumstances, and Bill’s sister, who also lived in DeKalb, had Bill’s and Rettie’s five children removed from the home. The reasons for the removal of the children are still a mystery, and my mother never learned where they went. She always worried about what happened to these children. It was only after Mother’s death that I found that Bill and Retta ended their days sadly in the Chicago area but that all of the children had been lovingly adopted. How I wish that Mother could have known that they were all well and that I now have personal contact with a member of the family who adopted one of them.

Gracie Ada Parker (1883-1943)

Gracie Ada married Jouett Menefee Speed—a member of the Kentucky Speed family of Joshua Speed who was friend and confidante of Abraham Lincoln. During the years that their son Richard was growing up he and his mother spent several weeks each summer in Nachusa with his grandparents, Christopher and Mary, who had never had a living son. Richard eventually traveled to England where he traced his Speed ancestry to the early 17th century English historian and cartographer John Speed.

Ida Perl Parker (1888-1979)

Ida Perl earned a teaching certificate after graduating from Franklin Grove high School, taught school in several
Lee County schools including the one-room Nachusa schoolhouse where she was Mother’s teacher for a year or two. She married Jesse Winfred Johnson, her first cousin. During the depression years of the 1930’s, before the advent of electricity and power machinery to that area, their family farmed some acreage near Nachusa. They later moved to Dixon. There Ida Perl taught elocution classes on occasion and was leader of study groups as a member of Ladies’Aid of St. Paul Lutheran Church and the Home Bureau. They had one daughter and then a granddaughter who still lives in Sterling, Illinois less than a half-hour’s drive at today’s speed from the Nachusa community.

Mary Catharine Clingan (1918)

Eventually the younger generations of the close-knit Nachusa family began to move beyond their compact self-sufficient community. The next to youngest Parker daughter Grace married and moved with her husband eventually to Louisiana and Florida as his business required. The eldest daughter Melissa enlisted as a nurse to serve in France during World War I. After the war she continued to serve as a nurse in various military hospitals in several different states. All the other daughters and their families stayed close to Lee County life.

It wasn’t until Mother’s generation that the speed and ease of communication and transportation opened the opportunity for Parker family members to expand the exploration of the United States from coast to coast. In just two generations the family extended their travel from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans, twice the distance from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River explored by nine generations in the prior 300 years.

Christopher and Mary Parker with their great-granddaughters, Barbara Nelson (left) and Mary Catharine Nelson (right).

Mary Catharine with Her Husband, John Nelson