John P. Brown and Jane Parks

I can’t believe it has been 6 months since my last post.  I meant to take a little break from research but never intended to be gone so long.  I’ll try to post more frequently.

I stumbled across something today that, once again, confirms the saying that you can’t always get what you want, but sometime you just might find what you need.

I was again rechecking the children of my earliest known Foster ancestor (James Foster, Sr. & Rebecca) and was focusing in on Burrell Foster who married Wlizabeth Willars in 1847.  I was on Ancestry.com and pulled up the Henry County, Missouri record of their marriage and noticed two items of interest.  First, the marriage was performed by Robert Foster, Minister of the Gospel.  Second was that her recorded a second marriage at the same time between John P. Brown and Jane Parks.

If you looked at the link above, you probably want to correct me right now to say, “That’s an ‘S’, Terry, not a ‘P”".  I agree, it does look that way but the Reverend Foster, for some reason, recorded the marriage a second time.  The second time it is clearly a “P”.

Anyone that is researching my line is probably aware who this John P. Brown is, already.  He is the son of Nathaniel P. Brown and Alice Anglin.  I was curious as to who this Jane Parks was.  There is a name before “Jane” on both marriage records that I cannot make out.  It appears to be something like “Rowsey”.  Alice Crandall Park had referenced this marriage and called her “Rosa”.  More on Alice’s reference in a bit. I found the couple on the 1850 Henry County, MO census and the picture began to get a little clearer.  They lived next to Nathaniel & Alice Brown and very near the Henry County Parks. They had a daughter, Susan, who was born that year.

The Henry County Parks are not known to be related to the Park/e/s that are featured in Alice Crandall Park’s book, Park/e/s and Bunch on the Trail West.  Both lines marry into the Foster line a couple of times just to keep me on my toes.  Alices Park family came to Missouri from North Carolina and settled mostly in Benton & Saint Clair Counties.  The “other” Parks came from Kentucky and settled mostly in Henry County.

1860 shows John, Jane & Susan still living next to Ailcy Anglin.

After spending several hours I was able to piece together a draft of a family tree of the Henry County Parks.  They seemed to encourage the marriage of distant cousins since it occurred many times.  If anyone would like a gedcom of these Parks, let me know.

So I still don’t know who this “Rev. Robert Foster” is nor can I prove how Burrell Foster is related to my Fosters (I still believe he was the son of James & Rebecca).  But I do know a smidgen more about the Parks!