Glendale, California Biographies

        Wilmot Parcher. His given name indicates that Mr. Parcher reaches back to that time in the history of the United States when the people still talked and debated over the “Wilmot Proviso.” As a matter of fact he was born July 23, 1847, at Stowe, Vermont. His father was Truman Parcher; his mother’s name was Jeanette Perkins. The father was one of the early settlers of the Green Mountain state and although he spent only three months of his busy life in school, was a well educated man and a practical mechanic in more that one line. The mother died when Wilmot was only a year old. She was a woman of fine character, coming of a family that furnished many men well known in the professional life of their time. In 1954 the family, consisting of the father and four children, moved to Minnesota. The elder Parcher and a few neighbors of that time the first schoolhouse in Clearwater, Minnesota, and to this school Wilmot went for three months of every year until he was 15 years old. The family of the pioneer Minnesota at that early day knew nothing of luxuries and it was generally a hard struggle to “make both ends meet.” This at least was the experience of the Parcher family and when fifteen years of age Wilmot began to “work out” among the neighbors, so that by the time he was twenty years old had accumulated enough money with which to pay off a debt of $600 on his father’s farm. This accomplished he made an agreement with a twin brother by which the latter was to stay on the farm, Wilmot agreeing to pay him half wages while he went away from home to earn more money. He went to work in a store at Clearwater and from there to Monticello, where he lived until 1871. From that place he went to Minneapolis, where he became interested in a livery business and engaged in the manufacture of carriages, remaining in business in that city until 1894, when he came to Los Angeles. In October 1901, Mr. Parcher came to Glendale, buying the Chase place of ten acres on Glendale Avenue, corner of Maple Street. He became President and General Manager of the Strawberry Growers Association, which had its headquarters, and packing and shipping depot, on Brand Boulevard, just adjoining the (now) Cerritos Schoolhouse. Mr. Parcher managed this business on a co-operative basis, with signal success, for over five years. At the height of its success, there were 262 members of this organization, representing various strawberry growing sections of Southern California, having about 1600 acres devoted to strawberry culture.

        In 1906 when the City of Glendale came into existence, Mr. Parcher was elected trustee for a two-year term and was unanimously chosen as president of the board, lacking the title of “Mayor” under the law, but performing all the duties of that office. He was re-elected for a four year term, but his health having become impaired, he resigned a few months later and, in search of a higher altitude, moved to Tujunga where he has since resided. Mr. Parcher has been married twice, the first time in 1871 to Miss Dora Wyman, of Westminster, Massachusetts, from which place she had come to Minnesota; and on the second occasion on June 30, 1892, to Miss Nannie Gertrude McBride, a native of Pennsylvania, who had come from that state to Minneapolis. Mr. and Mrs. Parcher have one son, Carroll W., a graduate of the Glendale Union High School, now editor of the Record-Ledger, of Tujunga, La Crescenta, La Canada and Montrose.

From History of Glendale and Vicinity by John Calvin Sherer. The Glendale Publishing Company, c. 1922 F. M. Broadbooks and J. C. Sherer. Pg. 470-473.