Among the Ann Arbor Observer listings for interesting things to do, last Saturday, was a historic presentation at Parker Mill County Park. A tour of the grist mill at the park, not too long ago, was fascinating, and the weather last Saturday was Perfect Fall, so off I went to Parker Mill.
The Observer listing did not mention where the tour would begin. Three people were sitting by the map of the park. No, they weren’t waiting for a presentation. There was no one in the pavilion. There were no signs of life at the cabin, down the hill and around a curve, nor had the man sitting on the bench that faces the cabin, seen any sign of an impending presentation.
By then, the appointed start time had passed. Puffing my way back up the hill, I met a woman wearing a long calico dress and carrying a woven basket over her arm. We walked together to the log cabin, and she unlocked and opened the door. Three little boys out for a walk with their dad, immediately noticed the open door and climbed up the porch steps to peek in.
The presenter immediately offered them jobs. “Could you boys help me carry these stools outside? Don’t worry if you can’t do it—they’re very heavy.” Suddenly, there was nothing in the world those boys wanted to do more than moving those stools.” The stools were heavy, but even the youngest boy, who looked to be about three years old, found he could lift them.
Their dad made it to the porch just as the boys looked to be making off with stools. The presenter assured him that they were, in fact, helping her out, and all the activity at the cabin began to attract an audience. Once the stools were on the grass, she grabbed a broom and started her presentation.
Standing on the porch in her long dress, while a two hundred fifty-year old oak wafted leaves down on her and her audience, she started to talk about the work of the farm wife in the nineteenth century. She told the little boys that she only said “farm wife” because there isn’t a word like “farmer” to describe the essential job of the woman on a farm.
“Her job was essential,” she told them. “You couldn’t have a farm without a farm wife.” Then the presenter started the story of Mary Parker, beginning with Mary’s early life in the Liverpool area of England. Did you know that the diet of the working class at that time consisted almost entirely of bread? And that the wardrobe was unlikely to include clothing that was even close to protecting the wearer from harsh winter weather?
Mary’s only access to education was likely to have been “ragged schools,” charitable endeavors set up to provide instruction to impoverished children, whoever showed up, whenever they showed up, most of them in ragged clothing. Literacy was a way out of poverty. Mary learned to read and picked up arithmetic and needle skills as well, enough to secure a position as a seamstress, then a dressmaker, and then as a lady’s maid.
Furthermore, she seems to have saved about every penny she earned from her wages and weekly “ale allowance.” She saved so well that, when she married, she paid for her own and her husband’s passage to the United States. She even had enough put by to pay for the purchase of the farm the two of them started together.
She and her husband built a log cabin on the land, using wood from their own trees. Some of the logs had been milled at the sawmill that once stood on the land, and some were hand hewn. The presenter pointed out examples of both kinds of logs in the cabin walls: the milled logs smooth and the others still show the marks of the adz. Mary and her husband had seven children in that one-room cabin, before building themselves a lovely, substantial, stone house up the hill.
The talk was fascinating, but I wished for more specifics on the farm wife’s work. The Parkers raised sheep; did Mary spin? Knit? Crochet? Weave? The presenter answered immediately.
“She didn’t spin. She did knit. And she had good sources of fabric.” Then the presenter handed me a chart on which a farm wife of Mary’s time had logged how she spent her time over the course of a day.
The audience for the talk drifted in and out of the cabin, as did the leaves of that enormous oak. It was a fine way to spend a perfect fall day.
24 October 2025