History of Michigan, / by Charles Moore. [Vol. 3]

HISTORY OF MICHIGAN

1427

Monroe county for a number of years. Early settlers here remember
her kindly as administering to the sick, traveling through swamps and
over corduroy roads to reach their new homes in the wilderness. His
maternal grandparents were likewise of Dutch descent and they emigrated from New York to Dundee township, Monroe county, Michigan,
in I840.
Burton Parker received his preliminary educational training in the
district schools of Dundee township and in the village of Petersburg.
Before and after school he worked in his father's lumber mill during the
summers, also during vacations. At times he was employed in the lumber woods, driving teams and running logs down the river. He was
the eldest in a family of five children. As his parents had both been
school teachers in their younger days they kept their children at their
school books during all of their spare moments. In October, I86I, Burton and his father enlisted for service in the Union ranks of the Civil
war. They became members of Company F, First Regiment of Engineers and Mechanics, the father being first sergeant of the company.
They were in the campaign of I86I and I862 in Kentucky, with Generals Buell and Thomas, and participated in the battle of Mill Springs,
Kentucky, on the Igth of January, I862, when the Confederate general,
Zollicoffer, who was in command of the Confederate forces, was killed.
Burton's father died while in service in Kentucky, his demise occurring
on the 4th of April, 1862, as the result of typhoid fever. One year
later, Burton was discharged on account of long and continued sickness.
He immediately returned home and after recovering from his sick spell
became a clerk in a dry goods store. Before he-had reached his twentysecond year he was elected justice of the peace and began the study of
law. He attended the University of Michigan, in the law department of
which he was graduated as a member of the class of 1870, duly receiving his degree of Bachelor of Laws.
Mr. Parker initiated the active practice of his profession at'Monroe,
where he gradually built up a large and lucrative law clientage. He has
always been a Republican in political matters, and in I868 he cast his
first vote for General Grant. In 1872 he was elected circuit court commissioner for Monroe county; in I88I he was elected mayor of Monroe
by a majority of 246 and re-elected the following spring by a majority
of 318. About the same time he was elected president of the school
board of Monroe, the city at that time being over two hundred Democratic. In 1882 he was elected a member of the legislature in the Monroe city district by a majority of 240, the district at that time being likewise strongly Democratic. As a member of the legislature he was chairman of the committee on municipal corporations and assisted in the
election of Thomas W. Palmer as United States senator. He was appointed Indian agent by President Arthur in the fall of 1884, at the
Fort Peck agency, Montana, at which place his wife did valiant missionary work. He was removed by President Cleveland in the winter of
1885-86. In I89o he was appointed special agent of the United States
treasury department and was removed twenty days after the inauguration of President Cleveland, but reinstated four years later under President McKinley. In March, I894, he was appointed deputy land commissioner by Land Commissioner William A. French, and after performing those duties for three years he resigned to accept reinstatement under President McKinley as special agent of the treasury department.
On the first of October, I903, he was appointed supervising special
agent, in which position he served four years, during President's Roosevelt's administration, being irf charge of all special officers in the United
States and foreign countries. At the present time, in 1914, he is special