Edwin Wallace Parker was born on January 21, 1833 in St. Johnsbury, Caledonia County, Vermont, United States. He was the son of Quincy B. and Electa (McGaffy) Parker. He was a grandson of Nathan Parker who, near the close of the eighteenth century, moved from Massachusetts to Vermont.
Edwin Wallace Parker attended school winters, worked on his father's farm, and for two terms was a student in St. Johnsbury Plain Academy. On March 1856, Edwin Wallace Packer entered the Methodist Biblical Institute, Concord, New Hampshire. Completing the three years' course there in two, he graduated in 1858.
Converted at twenty, Edwin Wallace Parker determined to enter the ministry. After preparatory work in the academies at Newbury and St. Johnsbury, during which he supported himself by farm labor and teaching. In the meantime, April 1857, he had been admitted to the Vermont Conference on trial, and on April 1858, he was appointed to the church in Lunenburg, Vermont. The Sepoy Mutiny was an impetus to greater missionary activity in India. New workers were called for, and among the first to respond were Parker and his wife. The former was appointed missionary February 22, 1859, and ordained April 10, in Lynn, Massachussets, where the New England Conference of the Methodist Church was in session. Six days later the Parkers sailed on the merchant vessel Boston, which was bound for Calcutta with a cargo of ice. They arrived at that port on August 21, and reached the mission at Lucknow on September 3. For the remainder of his life Parker was a potent agency in the development of Methodist missionary enterprises in Northern India, much of the time with Moradabad as his base.
When the India Conference was organized in 1864, Edwin Wallace Parker was appointed presiding elder, and officiated as such, with the exception of some three years, until 1900. While in the United States because of ill health in 1868 - 1870, he and his wife were instrumental in organizing the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society in Tremont Street Church, Boston, and in arranging for the formation of coordinate societies in other great centers of the country. After his return to India he raised funds for the building in Moradabad of a structure combining church and school house, which, after his death, was named the Bishop Parker Memorial High School. With J. M. Thoburn, he took the lead in establishing the Central Conference of India.
In 1884 he was a delegate from the North India Conference to the General Conference, held at Philadelphia. He advised with John F. Goucher, regarding the village schools in India which this philanthropist financed, and for years gave them his attention. Always deeply interested in Sunday school work and the training of the young, he formed at Moradabad a young people's society which became the model for many others, and after the Epworth League organization was adopted in India, he served as president of the national society. He was a delegate to the General Conferences of 1892, 1896, and 1900. At the last of these Edwin Wallace Parker was elected missionary bishop. Soon after his return to India, however, he became ill and on June 4, 1901, died in Nainital.
Edwin Wallace Parker was reared in a Methodist home and declared that as soon as he knew anything, he knew that there was a heaven and a hell and that he was free to choose whether he would go to one or to the other.
Edwin Wallace Parker was the founder of Women’s Foreign Missionary Society.
Edwin Wallace Parker's wife was Lois Lee.
