Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/197



Cynthia Ann Parker was born on the Cumberland River in Northeastern Tennessee on the 15th day of August, 1813. Her father, Jeremiah Parker, was a native of a Northern State and was a flatboatman on the Mississippi River. This was before the days steam. And what were called flatboats were built something like a scow, loaded with produce and floated down the river to a market, usually New Orleans, where the freight was sold and the boat also; which last was usually broken up for the lumber used in its construction. This was Jeremiah Parker's business. His wife was Dutch; her name Sallie Ann Yauhnt. Her parents had emigrated from Holland in her youth. She was the mother of five children. Cynthia Ann was the only girl and was the fourth child. The mother died when Cynthia was seven and her younger brother was five years old. The father took the three older boys onto the boat with him and gave the two younger children to their mother's brother, John Yauhnt, in Missouri. There were few chances for education in those days, and the children received very little. Cynthia learned to spin and weave as well as other house work. And as she grew older found employment in the families of neighbors where she earned her food and clothes.

She did much work for a Mrs. English, who befriended her and to whom she became much attached. At this friend's house she met one evening at a log-rolling bee a young surveyor, Jesse Applegate, and three months later became his wife. They were married on the 13th of March, 1831. She was not yet eighteen nor he twenty years of age. The first year of their married life was passed in St. Louis, where he clerked in the Surveyor-General's office and where their first child was born. Later he took up land in St. Clair County, Missouri, on the banks of the Osage River, and she camped there