Obit of Mrs. Sarah Ann Parker Arnold - sister of John Aaron Parker - In Whitney (Tarver Community), Hill County,
Texas - date & newspaper unknown. Info. from Betty & Chuck Guttierrez in Calif. in 2000
"In Memory of Mrs. Sarah Ann Parker Arnold"


As the cold blasts of Autumn sweep over our prairies leaving the gentle flowers of summer withered and gray
and cold, so the angel of death has swept over our home and in taking our "guiding star" from her earthly setting,
has left us like the drooping flowers of Autumn, sad and lonely, but buried in a sea of golden memories that are like
rays of shining light in a world of darkness and gloom.

To her neighbors, she was both friend and counselor, to her family she was guardian and saint and to her God
she was a loyal servant and an adoring subject.

Such was Sarah Ann Parker Arnold, wife of Rev. John F. Arnold, who passed to her eternal reward on January
7, after a brief illness at her home in the Tarver community, near Whitney.

She was born in Georgia on June 2, 1847, the eleventh of fourteen children and daughter of West and Mahaley
George Parker. In her infancy, her parents left their home in Georgia and settled in Caldwell Parish, near Monroe,
Louisiana and there Sarah Ann grew to young womanhood. She was educated in the parish school, and her
mother taught her the arts of spinning and weaving and the other things that a homemaker should know.





A photograph of her taken when she was eighteen shows a lovely girl, radiant with hope and vitality, dressed in a
blue taffeta dress, trimmed in lace knitted by her own hand, with her curly hair adorned by a bunch of white flowers
that vie with her face in freshness and beauty.

In 1868 she came to Texas with her mother and brothers and settled near Clarksville. She was married to John
Francis Arnold on January 17, 1877, and a month later they came to Hill County and settled in a "rawhide" (post
oak lumber) house on a stretch of farm land in what is now the eastern part of Whitney.

That fall they bought a home in Tarver community and settled in the log house that still stands as a part of one of
the tenant houses on the farm. Here they lived until 1895, and here all of her children were born. The oldest son
born on February 1, 1878, died in infancy, but on August 16, 1879, the home was blessed with the birth of another
son, Robert Jackson Arnold, who was one of his mother's closest confidants until his death in February, 1923. Her
other children, West Arnold of Megargel, Francis M. Arnold of Abilene, and Holley L. Arnold and Miss Lottie Olena
Arnold, both of Whitney, survive their mother.

As was the case with all our frontier women, her's was a full and happy life. She and her husband attended
church at Bethlehem Baptist church, carrying their children in a wagon to hear "Old Brother Lockett", who
preached in Mrs. Watson's little log house in winter and under the post oak trees in summer. She spun thread and
knitted sox and stockings for her family and she made the clothing for the entire family, often times by her hand
without the aid of a sewing machine. She sent her little brood to school on winter mornings before sunrise with
their books in a "satchel and their lunch in a tin pail". She quilted, she cooked, she made a garden and she made
a comfortable and peaceful and happy home, where she strove to teach her children the great principles of life by
being a living example before them.

In 1895 the family moved to a new home where she resided until the date of her death. From there she saw her
children go out into homes of their own and there she enjoyed the association of her fourteen grandchildren, who
now look back to the hours spent with her as the crowning jewels of their lives, for she gave of her love as
generously as she gave of the ginger cakes. She has loved them, taught them, soothed them and inspired them
to strive for the realization of youths rosy dreams.

Her neighbors too, have found her a source of comfort and her home a home for them. One woman who has
been her closest neighbor for fifty-one years declares that she was one of the noblest of women.