Stephen Parker

Stephen Parker was born in Billerica on December 1, 1760, a son of the tanner John Parker and his wife Abigail Kidder. In 1790 he married Mary Duren, daughter of the architect Reuben Duren, and the couple set up house in the old Ruggles mansion on River Street that his father had bought. The MACRIS survey of the house credits the Federal portico and dentil trim of its best rooms to a remodelling probably made at the time of this marriage. A "Stephen Parker's corner, at the west end of the meeting house" was chosen in 1791 as the site of the Centre's new district schoolhouse, and when the new meeting-house was built in 1797, Capt. Stephen Parker bought two of its pews.

Mary Duren Parker died on October 11, 1801, and Stephen then married Sibbel, a daughter of Ephraim of Dracut. About 1805 he bought out the heirs of his uncle Solomon Kidder, who had died at White Plains in 1776, and moved back to the ancestral Kidder homestead across River Street, where his mother had grown up. The place stayed in his family for three more generations.

His children included Mary, who married the Rev. Rodney Gove Dennis; Stephen; Sarah; Elizabeth; Dr. Daniel Parker, the town's physician for fifty years; Gardner Parker, who inherited the homestead; and Clarissa, later Mrs. Osborn, who gave her strawberry garden as the site of the Bennett Library. Stephen Parker died on October 8, 1829, and his widow Sibbel on June 26, 1847, aged 80.

The Parker School, opened by the town on River Street in 1953 a short walk from the Kidder-Parker homestead, carries the name of the Parker family.

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register pp. 105-106, PARKER family #18
2. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 256, Education (schoolhouse in Stephen Parker's corner)
3. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 264, Religious History (sale of pews, 1797)
4. MACRIS BIL.53, Ruggles-Parker House, 5 River St
5. MACRIS BIL.55, John Nelson Parker House, 16 River St