Charles Parker

Background

Parker was born in Newton, Massachusetts on November 16. His father was a sea captain, and died when Charles was a small boy.

Career

1814, and received a common school education. His family moved to Dedham, Massachusetts when he was ten years old and to Canton, Massachusetts when he was sixteen. He moved to Concord, New Hampshire in 1837, where he was a cutler for some time.

He "came west" in the spring of 1848, and first settled at Belvidere, Illinois, where he managed the farm of a Doctor Jonathan Stone near that city.

He took up work as a machinist in a Beloit reaper factory the next year for $1 a day, and would walk back home to his family in Belvidere on Friday evenings, returning to his job on the following Monday morning. In 1850 he permanently moved Eleanor and their family to Beloit.

They commenced by first making hoes and then expanding to such implements as grain sickles and blades for mowing machines. Parker would end up the president of the Parker & Stone Reaper Company.

(lieutenant was while working for Parker and Stone that John Appleby developed his famous Appleby Twine Binder)

Parker served as an alderman of the city of Beloit most of the time from 1857 into the 1880s, and was mayor in 1861.

He was succeeded by fellow Republican John Hammond. In 1876 Parker was once more elected to the Assembly, from Rock County"s reapportioned 1st Assembly district (now the city of Beloit, and the Towns of Avon, Beloit, Center, Newark, Magnolia, Plymouth, Spring Valley, and Union), this time as a Greenback. He received 1,079 votes against 972 for Republican William Alcott.

There was no Greenback candidate for his Assembly seat, which was taken by Republican Richard Burdge.

(Eleanor would die March 24, 1900, at the age of 81) L. Holden Parker would succeed his father as president of the bank. And would eventually serve one term (as a Republican) in the Assembly district which included Beloit.

Achievements

• In 1878 Parker was the Greenback nominee for the Forty-Sixth Congress for the First Wisconsin District. Incumbent Charles G. Williams won 14,629 votes to Parker"s 9,949 (Parker was endorsed by the Democrats as well).

Membership

He repeatedly served as a member of the county board, and was twice elected to Rock County"s 4th Assembly district (the City of Beloit, and the Towns of Beloit, Newark and Turtle) as a Republican for 1868 and 1869 (succeeding Horatio Murray). (Republican incumbent Sereno Merrill was not a candidate for reelection) He was chiefly responsible for the formation of an alliance between the Greenback and Democratic members of the Assembly.

Connections

brother-in-law:

Gustavus Stone