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William & Ella Bell Parker Parker Family Reunion Site |
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History The Parker Family History, as we know it, began with the union of the William & Ella Bell Parker. William (better know as Billy) and Ella Bell were slave workers in the state of Georgia near Butler (Talbot County) GA. No information is known at this about Ella Bell and her family heritage. Our best estimate is Billy was born around or shortly after 1850 and grew up as a slave. Due to the inhumane conditions he was forced to endure, he ran away from his master at about the age of 16 and lived in the woods for a number of years. He survived by scalping food from nearby pork houses, smoke houses, ham curing barns, and eating wild vegetables, fruits, and berries. He was eventually convinced by freed men he encountered to come out of the woods. Billy had lived in the woods alone for so long that he had forgotten his name. Therefore, he took the name of the first master he worked for after coming out of the woods. The name was PARKER. The exact dates and times of these events were never recorded and are based on bits and pieces of information passed down through the years. Our guess is that all of this happened between the mid-to-late 1800s. Billy died in September of 1937. He was reportedly 88 years old. The day and month of his birth are unknown. His birth year was estimated by counting from 1937 back 88 years to arrive at the year of 1850. Billy and Ella Bell raised six children: Daisy, Ester, Martha, Fannie, Allan, and Freeman. It is believed that the family migrated to Worth County around 1900 while Allan and Freeman were yet young. Not much is known about the four girls or where they raised their families. We do know that Daisy had no children, Fannie had five, Ester had one, and Martha had five. Of the two boys—Allan had three children, and Freeman had fourteen.
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