Sidney M. Parker was born on September 21, 1842, in Canada to George and Ann Parker. His father was a sawyer carpenter who owned $100 of personal property by 1860. They moved to Vermont in the late 1840s and settled in Highgate. Parker grew up and attended school there, and by 1860, he was working as a carpenter.

 

He enlisted in the Union army on March 8, 1862, and mustered in as a private in Company C of the 5^th Vermont Infantry on April 12. The regiment took part in the Battle of Antietam, the Battle of Fredericksburg, the Battle of Chancellorsville, the Battle of Gettysburg, the Battle of the Wilderness, the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, the Battle of Cold Harbor, and the siege of Petersburg. He eventually earned a promotion to corporal. He was shot in the arm near Winchester, Virginia, on September 19, 1864, and discharged for disability on February 22, 1865.

 

Parker probably returned to Vermont after leaving the army. He applied for a federal pension in March 1865 and eventually secured one. He married Mary Jane Clapper around 1865, and they had seven children, five of whom survived: Ernest, born around 1867; Lucia, born around 1870; Eva, born around 1879; Etta, born around 1881; and Sidney, born around 1883.

 

By 1871, they were living in Stanbridge, Canada, and Parker was working as a machinist. The family settled in Hartland, Vermont, sometime in the 1870s. By 1880, Parker was working as a laborer there, and he employed at least one white servant. They moved to Lebanon, New Hampshire, around 1884 and then to Gardner, Massachusetts, around 1901. He was admitted to the hospital at the Soldier’s Home in Bennington, Vermont, in early May 1902 “in very poor health.” He died there of “Progressive Muscular Atrophy” on May 3, 1902.

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