Electa Pettijohn was born around 1840 in Ohio to Lewis and Eleanor Pettijohn. Her father was a Wesleyan minister who owned $200 of real estate and $300 of personal property by 1860. The family lived in Troy, Ohio, until the 1850s, when they moved to Sardinia, Ohio. By 1860, she was working as a teacher. She moved to Hamilton County, Indiana, in the 1860s, and she taught reading at the Hamilton County Teachers Institute. She married James R. Parker on August 19, 1875, and she died around 1876.