ORRIN W. PARKER

 

Orrin W. Parker, 0f the Board of Education of the city of Oakland, was born in Trumbull county, Ohio, June 5, 1835, a son of James and Jane (Miller) Parker, both natives of Dublin, Ireland.  They emigrated to America about 1830, accompanied by the father and grandfather of James Parker.  William Parker, the father, lived at the age of eighty-eight and his father was eighty-six at death.  James Parker followed the career of a farmer in Trumbull county for many years, and moved to Rock Island, Illinois, in 1856.  He was engaged in milling for some time and finally lived there in retirement for some years, dying at the age of seventy-three.  Mrs. Parker died also in Rock Island, of  pneumonia, at the age of fifty-five.  Five children survive the parents and are living, in 1890, the subject of this sketch being the only son.

    O. W. Parker was educated in a district school of his native country, and after the age of ten in Detroit, Michigan, where he was graduated in 1853 from Miller's school, an institution conducted under the auspices of the  Philharmonic Society of that city.  He taught music in Detroit after graduation, until he left for this coast in 1855.  He came to California by the Nicaragua route and first located in Placerville, where he taught music in the public school and also in the Placerville Academy, helping also in the organization and training of church choirs.  After ten years in that town he moved to San Jose, where he was similarly employed, being also musical director in the Episcopal church of that city from 1866 to 1874.  He then moved to Los Angeles, where he served in the public schools and the church choir until he left for San Francisco in 1876.  In July, 1876, he settled in Oakland, where he has since remained without even a change of residence, having purchased in 1877 the house he first occupied.  He has been engaged here chiefly in professional labor as a teacher of music in public schools and to private pupils.  A taste and aptitude for music seems a natural endowment in Mr. Parker, who was a violinist in a small way at the age of six.  But natural facilities has been supplemented by careful training and diligent study of the divine art.  He has been a member of the Board of Education of Oakland since 1889, having filled a simular position in El Dorado county, near Placerville, in 1859.

    Mr. Parker was married in Detroit in 1853, to Miss Sarah J. Greeley, born in Michigan in 1836.  She died in Placerville in 1863, leaving two daughters, of whom one died the same year.  The other, Ella Parker, now the wife of Leonard Fisher, a farmer in the State of Washington, has a boy, Donald, and a girl.  Some years later, Mr. Parker was again married, in San Jose, to Flora A. Bennett, a native of Indiana.