Frank Parent of Abilene, Kansas
1909 postcard from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Abilene, Kansas
In July 1909, Mr Frank Parent of Abilene, Kansas, received a postcard from his mother, who was on vacation in British Columbia. It read ...
Friday
Dearest son -
Here we are on board the boat between Victoria and Seattle. We are having a grand trip. Never saw such scenery in my life. Wish you were all along. How is my sweetheart. We are all feeling fine. Will reach Seattle tonight. Bushels of love to all.
Mother
Can we learn anything about Mr Parent and his family?
Frank Dyal Parent
Yes, and apparently a lot of other people have as well. A place to start is this tree on ancestry or this one on familysearch.
As the trees point out, Frank Dyal Parent was born July 11, 1878, in Abilene, Kansas, the only known child of George Parent and Mary A Dyal. He and his wife Alice Stirl had two daughters: Mary Alice, born in 1908, and Nancy born in 1911. I assume George's mother was asking about Mary Alice when she said "How is my sweetheart?"
Frank was an attorney in Abilene when he received his mother's card, but soon left for Los Angeles and is on the 1910 census there. He became a municipal judge and worked in real estate. He died there at the age of 81--you can find his obituary on his findgrave page. A death notice for his mother can be found on her page at findagrave as well.
Skipping farther back
Rather than just copy information from ancestry or familysearch into this article, I skipped back a few generations and looked at Frank's mother's paternal grandfather, John Dial, and John's likely father-in-law, George Allabaugh. See John Dial of Crawford Township, Coschocton County, Ohio and George Alabaugh of Crawford Township, Coshocton County, Ohio, on this site. And on his father's side John Parent of Onondaga, New York.