Progressive Thinkers Come To Life In Wild West

COURTESY PHOTO 
Sue Robison has been portraying “Hanging Judge” Isaac Parker’s wife, Mary, to her husband’s portrayal of the judge for many years. She’ll appear as Mary Saturday at the Fort Smith National Historic Site.
COURTESY PHOTO Sue Robison has been portraying “Hanging Judge” Isaac Parker’s wife, Mary, to her husband’s portrayal of the judge for many years. She’ll appear as Mary Saturday at the Fort Smith National Historic Site.

History remembers the border between Arkansas and the Indian Territory as a wild and woolly place, with “Hanging Judge” Isaac C. Parker adjudicating federal cases in the Western District of Arkansas from his courtroom in Fort Smith. Certainly, it was not a place fit for a woman of breeding.

Go And Do

Mary O’Toole Parker

Living History Presentation

What: Sue Robison, a living history volunteer, speaks on the life of the wife “Hanging Judge” Isaac C. Parker

When: 10 am. and 2 p.m. Saturday

Where: Fort Smith National Historic Site, 301 Parker Ave.

Admission: Free

Information: 266-3727

But Parker’s wife, Mary, found herself at home and worked to make the town habitable.

Mary Parker — as interpreted by volunteer Sue Robison — speaks to guests Saturday at Fort Smith National Historic Site.

Robison said she portrayed Judge Parker’s wife to her husband’s portrayal of the judge for many years. When she started researching women in the Victorian era, she enhanced her character.

“I’m happy people are starting to pay more attention to the role of women,” she said. “Women did a lot more than they received credit for.

“It’s my great pleasure to introduce people to Mary O’Toole Parker.”

Mary O’Toole and Isaac Parker met when Parker was a 21-year-old lawyer, working with his uncle in St. Joseph, Mo. Mary was 19 and always helped her mother when guests — including Parker — visited their home for “dinner and talk,” Robison said. Parker was the son of a tobacco farmer and put himself through college; Mary — whose father was a judge — was raised a devout Catholic and attended private schools.

They married Dec. 12, 1861, when O’Toole was 19 and Parker — who had already passed the bar exam — was 21.

Parker and his family were on their way to Utah, where Isaac was going to serve as a judge in the Utah Supreme Court, when President Ulysses S. Grant asked him to “clean up Fort Smith,” Robison said. Parker, instead, served 21 years in Fort Smith: 1875 to 1896.

“There are a lot of different reactions (to Fort Smith) that Mary is said to have had,” Robison said with a laugh. “And, ‘Oh, my goodness. What have we done?’ was probably one of them.”

In fact, Fort Smith was relatively safe when the judge and his family arrived. “Most of the crime happened in Indian Territory,” Robison said.

Fort Smith also was quite wealthy at this point in its history, Robison shared. As a starting place for people migrating to California, there was “a lot of money to be made.” German immigrants from the Subiaco area built a lot of downtown Fort Smith.

“Fort Smith was a growing little town,” she said. “There were some houses and some businesses along Garrison Avenue.”

Mary Parker served on the fair board, helped establish what is now Sparks Regional Medical Center and helped organize Memorial Day remembrances at the National Cemetery (which at the time included soldiers from the Civil War, just 10 years past).

She was active in the Fortnightly Club, in which women, who had money and could afford books, read and talked about them. But she wanted to extend the books to everybody, so the group raised money to provide 1,000 books for children to borrow.

This evolved into the Fort Smith Public Library — the first Carnegie library in Arkansas, Robison said. And it was built on the home site in the now-historic Belle Grove neighborhood, where Judge Parker lived and died.

Both of the Parkers believed heavily in public or “free” education and loaned the money to build Fort Smith High School, which is now Darby Junior High, in 1897, Robison noted. “She was very, very intense about public education. She thought education was for everyone. In fact, she wanted to start a free school that prepared students to enter the university.

“It was the Victorian era, but Mary lived in a transitional time as far as what women were supposed to do,” Robison said.

“The judge was referred to as ‘progressive,’” Robison continued. “He believed in women’s suffrage. He didn’t know how you could civilize a community without the full participation of women.”

But the couple didn’t always agree, “and they differed very loudly on some occasions,” Robison said with a laugh.

Through her church, which became Immaculate Conception Catholic Church, she would call on prisoners her husband had condemned to the gallows to bring them peace and comfort, Robison noted. “The judge said it was a waste of effort. They should have gone to the families of the condemned.”

Mary Parker worked to establish libraries right up until her death at her son’s house in Oklahoma — and some of those libraries still are in operation, Robison reported. Mary’s son, Charles, was the first judge in Bryant County, Okla., Robsion said. Dying in 1926 in her mid-80s, Mary Parker outlived three sons and her husband, with only a widowed daughter-in-law and young grandchildren still residing in Fort Smith.

As an honor to Judge Parker, the local bar association arranged and paid for the burial of Mary next to her husband in the Fort Smith National Cemetery.

Upcoming Events