Parish Family Papers, 1884-1896

Gift, Natalie Hazelton Mata, 1996

The Parish Family Papers are open for research in the Special Collections Reading Room; 1 box at a time (Priority III).

The Parish Family Papers are the physical property of the Newberry Library. Copyright may belong to the authors or their legal heirs or assigns. For permission to publish or reproduce any materials from this collection, contact the Roger and Julie Baskes Department of Special Collections.

Parish Family Papers, The Newberry Library, Chicago.

Marisa Bell-Metereau, 2009.

This inventory was created with the generous support of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this inventory do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Materials primarily related to Martha Ellen Luey Parish, married to Chicago cabinet hardware manufacturer Charles Pomeroy Parish.

Martha Ellen Luey was born in 1850 in Greenfield, Massachusetts, the daughter of Lester L. Luey and Mary Moody Luey. The third of five children, she lived with her family in Greenfield until she married Charles P. Parish on December 27, 1881. Charles Parish’s family was from Omaha, Nebraska, but Charles and Flora, his sister, grew up in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Flora married Sam Tobin; one of their children, Kittie, married Frank Lloyd Wright.

Charles and Martha Parish settled in Chicago, Illinois, where they raised five children. Charles co-owned a cabinet hardware and upholstery goods manufacturing company in Chicago called Gibson, Parish & Company. For a number of years the family lived in a house on Kimbark Avenue in Chicago, living next door to cousins on the Parish side of the family. They later bought and moved to a farm in Homewood, Illinois. Martha Luey Parish died on June 8, 1925.

Most of the letters are from Martha Ellen Luey Parish to her father, Lester Lyman Luey. The letters mainly concern domestic matters, although some community topics are touched on. Among the subjects are: electrification, the bicycling mania, fires and fire insurance, the final days of the Columbian Exposition, weather, and health matters. There are also several letters concerning the problems created by Martha’s alcoholic brother Henry Luey, who was finally placed at the "Washington Home" to recover.

Also included are a Chicago Fire Patrol report from March 2, 1889 when Charles Parish’s business burned down, an ornate envelope from Gibson, Parish, & Co. to L. L. Luey, a pamphlet from Gibson, Parish, & Co. advertising a new location and their reopening, and a pamphlet from the Grand Opera house on the occasion of going electric, called their “first illumination."

Typed transcripts of the letters from Martha Ellen Luey Parish to her father, Lester Lyman Luey, 1884-1896, are in the last folder of the collection.

Materials arranged alphabetically by subject.

• Names
  • Luey, Lester Lyman
  • Parish, Charles Pomeroy
  • Parish, Martha Ellen Luey
• Subject
  • Alcoholism -- Treatment -- United States
  • Chicago
  • Family Papers
  • Furniture industry and trade -- Illinois -- Chicago
  • Manuscripts, American -- Illinois -- Chicago
  • Parent and adult child -- Correspondence
  • Women
  • World's Columbian Exposition (1893 : Chicago, Ill.)