Alice Parker Isom- 3rd Great Grandma

My Great Aunt remembered that Alice Parker was, "Small, alert and intelligent. If she had something to do or a goal to attain, nothing stopped her. She took pride in her appearance, and dressed nicer than most pioneer women of her day in southern Utah. I always think of her as "Jeanie with the light brown hair." Her hair never turned white and she never grew old."

 Alice's mother Ellen and her first husband George Douglass joined the church in England. They were taught by Heber C. Kimball and moved to Nauvoo. George passed away in Nauvoo and Ellen married John Parker, a widower with a few children of his own. They were forced out of Nauvoo with the rest of the saints and went to St. Louis.

She recalled, "I was born in St. Louis on the eighth day of January, 1848. My parents remained in St. Louis six years. During that time they went into the soda water and root beer business in that city and made a small fortune, sufficient to buy eleven wagons with two yokes of oxen each, a threshing machine, one of, if not the first, to be brought to Utah. Also one large spring carriage, drawn by a span of big horses, in which we rode. Some of the cattle were cows and furnished milk and butter for the company all across the Plains. The milk was put in a kit and churned during the day by the jolt of the wagon. My Brother Ralph Douglas had been with the Mormon Battalion. He came into Salt Lake Valley with the Pioneers of 1847. He went back to Council Bluffs for his wife and returned to Utah in 1850. During our stay in St. Louis my brother Richard married Elizabeth Wadsworth. Sister Ann married Edmond Robbins and Isabelle, John Pincock. They were all members of the Church. They emigrated in father's company."

As a child she danced and sang. Her mother (Ellen Briggs Douglas Parker) wrote to the grandmother in England, "I wish you could see my little Alice dance and sing. She talks about her grandmother as if she had seen you and knew you all her life."

Alice recalled, "Schools were very primitive. I used to go to an old lady that always sat and knitted while we read our lessons. There was scarcely two books alike in the rooms; I took any kind of a book that had been used in the family and had survived the wear of moving. I had a blue backed spelling book at first; it had the alphabet in it. Then a McGuffy's second reader. That I used until I knew most of it by heart. At last I had a Third Reader of some kind. An atlas, descriptive geography. Ray's third-part arithmetic, slate, pencil, copy-book, pen and ink were all that was needed. Three months of the year was the most we ever went to school." Alice would make sure that her children were educated. 

She also began to weave.  She said, "When I was twelve years old I learned to spin wool. Father had sheep. Before shearing them they would take them into the Jordan river to wash the sand out of the wool. Mother would have a wool picking and invite the neighbors. The wool was then greased and sent to be carded into rolls. I had a spinning wheel and soon became an expert spinner. We reeled the yarn on a reel made for the purpose. It was two yards around; forty rounds made one knot, and ten knots made one skein. Four skeins was considered a day's work for a woman. Before I was fifteen I spun five skeins a day for weeks together. Father and mother had a loom and both could and did weave, father only in winter time when he could not do anything else. I learned to weave and could do everything connected with it, but was never so proficient at it as mother was."

In October, 1862, John was tasked to move to Southern Utah. Alice was the only unmarried child, so she and her Mother went with John.  When there, Alice learned how to dye wool. She wrote, "The coloring of our yarn took both time and skill. Dyeing was a technical operation if one was to get good fast clear colors. It was not always easy to procure the dyeing ingredients wanted. Blue took ten days or more. The yarn had to be wrung out of the indigo dye every day and aired and put back until the blue yarn scalded up in it. Red was colored with madder and sour bran-water set with lye made of ashes. For brown the madder was set with copperas; for black we used log-wood and copperas or vitriol to set the color. After we came to Dixie we raised the madder and dug the roots to dye with. We also used dock-root."

During this time she met a young man who loved to sing and dance. His name was Geoge Isom. She went to Ogden for a few months to visit her siblings. She said, "George Isom and I started to correspond, but something in my second letter grated unpleasantly upon his sensitive feelings: this, with the talk of busy-bodies, "That I had gone to be married and didn't intend to return." We each wrote one more letter and quit. Then he started to take out another girl, one that I thought a great deal of. I never would have had a husband if I had had to win him by correspondence. Two of my letters were all that any of my beaus could stand. While I learned to talk love to the one that won my heart I never could write. When I. left in June I did not know that I was in love. When I returned I knew that he was more to me than anyone had been. It was November when we returned to Dixie. George and I met as friends. He often called. He took the other girl home from meeting and to the dances. We were all friends together. We were both too proud to betray our feelings to each other. I was satisfied that he cared for me. He was not very good at hiding his feelings and I always treated him very kind. On St. Valentine's Eve in 1868 we had a leap-year party. I took his brother Sam. Just as I started from the house his sister Sarah handed me a letter. I put it in my dress front. I did not have time to read it until after the dance because I was floor manager. After the party was out I read my letter, which he requested me to burn after reading. And I am sorry and have been ever since that I did. It was my valentine, the very best one I ever had and meant so much to us both." 

Alice was ready to be George's wife. She wrote, "My trousseau consisted of towels and tablecloths I had spun and mother wove with a diamond pattern in them. They were bleached white. Cotton sheets and pillow slips, wool blankets and rag carpet were all made with our own hands. I had two pair of bleached muslin pillow slips, one pair trimmed with Mexican drawn-work and the other with lace also of my own making. I had three quilts, a good feather bed and pillows, also a good shuck bed. I had plenty of good clothes. I had as pretty dresses as I have ever had. I had one lovely silk and mohair, one nice cashmere, some lawn dresses, five good home-spun dresses, and nice underwear trimmed with my own work.

George, Alice, Ellen and Alice

On the 12th of July, 1869 George Isom and I were married in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City by Joseph F. Smith. Wilford Woodruff and Daniel H. Wells were our witnesses. Father and mother were also there. We had a nice visit with our relatives and friends for two weeks in Salt Lake and Ogden where we saw the railroad for the first time, it having reached there in the spring."

She remembered that, "My husband was a very thrifty hard working man, a good farmer, mason and bookkeeper, so that he always had a good job. We were all provided for and had a very comfortable home. We always avoided debt." 

 

Isom Store and Home

George and Alice's children

They started their own store and had 7 children. However, two weeks before their last child was born, George unexpectedly passed away. Alice was now on her own. She remembered, "I cannot describe my feelinqs. None could realize but those left as I was. I felt that life was a blank for me. We were always lovers. Our honeymoon never had set." When Sarah Laverna, her last child was born, Alice wrote, "I have always felt that she was one of the greatest blessings, coming when she did. I had to take care of her."

Alice with Laverna and Evadna

Alice's father passed away soon after and her older daughters married good men. Alice sold the store and moved to Provo so her children could have a proper education. My Great Aunt wrote, "As the children left the nest, Grandma Isom started a family circular letter. By the time it came to mama (Sarah Laverna) , she being the youngest, we practically had a book to read. 'We all enjoyed hearing about the relatives. After mama's children left the home in marriage or for school, she wrote a weekly letter to each absent member and expected a reply each week in return. When she died we all missed her letters. It left a void in our lives. She kept our letters to her and they became a personal diary for each of us."

She became a midwife and delivered my Great Grandma in the same home that her mother was born. She had a tumor in her eye and lost her eye as a result. She did not want to lose the eye, but said it was better than death. She passed away in 1924.

She was a business woman, a midwife, a mother and a wife. She raised her children and did what was right. She was a true Pioneer. 

Link to her own history: https://www.familysearch.org/photos/artifacts/6690477?p=12148389&returnLabel=Alice%20Parker%20(KWNF-7ST)&returnUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.familysearch.org%2Ftree%2Fperson%2Fmemories%2FKWNF-7ST