US Congressman, Jurist. He is recognized for his service in the United States House of Representatives, but more for having the reputation of being a staunch jurist enforcing the pinpoint of the law in post-American Civil War Missouri. His critics called him "The Hanging Judge". Born in a log cabin outside of Barnesville, Ohio, he attended the local schools and taught himself law. For four years he alternately attended Barnesville Academy and taught school. He was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1859 at the age of 21. Shortly thereafter he relocated to St. Joseph, Missouri. He earned a reputation as an honest attorney and in 1861 was elected to the office of city attorney. Four days after he took the office, the American Civil War started on April 12, 1861. Although Missouri came to the Union as a slave state, the state did not secede to join the Confederacy but became a boarder state. He was chosen State's Attorney for the Ninth Judicial Circuit, and held the office until September of 1861. The war caused him to rethink his political positions and he broke with the Democrats for the Republican Party. He enlisted in the 61st Missouri Emergency Regiment, a home guard militia unit of the Union Army and participated in several skirmishes. In 1864, he was elected as a Republican to the county prosecutor for the Ninth Missouri Judicial District. In the fall of that year as a member of the Electoral College, he cast a vote for Abraham Lincoln. In 1870, he was elected to the US Congress and easily re-elected in 1872. By 1874, the political atmosphere in Missouri had changed to the point he knew he could not be re-elected. He began a campaign for appointment as judge of the Western District of Arkansas in Fort Smith where communities had been bitterly divided over politics, Confederate guerrilla fighters were at large, and lawless reigned. He had been nominated and approved by the United States Senate for the position of Chief Justice of Utah, but declined to stay in Missouri. On March 18, 1875, President Ulysses S. Grant appointed him to the position, serving eleven counties and the Indian territory. He arrived in Fort Smith on May 4, 1875 and held court for the first time on May 10, 1875. In his first term, eight men were found guilty of murder and six of them were hanged at the same time on September 3, 1875. Of the other two, one was killed during an escape attempt and the other was commuted to life in prison because of his youth. He was supposed to hold court four terms each year, which were in February, May, August, and November, yet the caseload was so great, that the terms ran together. He was holding court six days a week and each day lasting up to ten hours. He tried 91 defendants in his first eight weeks. He soon earned the nickname of "The Hanging Judge" from his critics. An advocate for the rights of the Indian nations, he was loved by the people in the Indian Territory and heard thousands of criminal complaints involving disputes and violence between Indians and non-Indians. With the help of his 210 deputy US marshals, the territory was being rid of its organized gangs and violent criminals. In actuality, the Judge was an opponent of the death penalty, but he was a strict adherent to the letter of the law and when the law required hanging for an offense, the offender was hanged. In his 21 years on the bench, Judge Parker tried 13,490 cases, 344 of which were capital crimes. Guilty pleas or convictions were handed down in 9,454 of the cases. He sentenced 160 people, which were 156 men and four women, to hang, though only 79 men were actually hanged. The rest either died in prison, appealed, or were pardoned. Over half, 109, of his deputies were killed in the line of duty, yet his deputies killed more than that many outlaws. When the August term of 1896 began, the Judge was too sick to preside over the court. Twenty years of overwork had contributed to a variety of ailments, including heart disease and Bright's Disease or renal failure. He married a Kentucky lady, Mary O'Toole, on December 12, 1861 in Ohio and the couple had two sons. His son Charles also became a judge. In his era, he passed the death sentence upon more criminals than has any other judge in the land. His obituary was published in "The American Law Review" Vol. XXXI, January-February of 1897.