Pargeter, Mary Goggin (1868-1950)

Mennonite Weekly Review obituary: 1938 Apr 27 p. 6

Birth date: 1868

text of obituary:

Pioneers of Pretty Prairie Give To Bethel College Memorial Fund.

Pictured here are Mr. and Mr. [sic] Frederic [sic Frederick] V. Pargeter of Pretty Prairie, Kansas, who recently made a contribution to Bethel College Memorial fund. They are among the pioneers of central Kansas whom the college will remember by the erection of a $100,000 Memorial hall. A memorial biography (the fourth of a series) of these two friends of Bethel college is printed in this issue of the Review.

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Frederick V. and Mary Pargeter.

A Memorial Biography

A Kansas wheat farmer who has travelled widely in Europe, America, and Hawaii, collects antiques, and who first discovered he could paint pictures after he had reached the age of the three-score and eight years is the story in brief of Frederic [sic Frederick] V. Pargeter of Pretty Prairie, Kansas.

A descendant of a line of Englishmen who for generations lived as farmers at Hook Norton, Oxfordshire, Mr. Pargeter was born at Birnmingham, England, on march 19, 1864. His mother was born in the shadow of the famous English Salisbury cathedral at Salisbury.

Names after Frederic [sic Fredrick] the Great of Prussia, young Fred at the age of four crossed the Atlantic ocean in 1869 aboard the "Prussian," a ship of the Cunnard [sic Cunard] line, with his parents, brothers William and Harry, and sister Ethel.

Father Bought Cheap Land in 1884

"We disembarked at Quebec, Canada, and there came to Madison, Wisconsin, where there was an English settlement," Mr. Pargeter began in telling his life story. Land adajcent [sic] to the Santa Fe railroad in Kansas was low-priced, so when his father heard this, he together with three men came to Kansas in 1884 and bought six sections of land near Pretty Prairie at $4.75 an acre.

In recalling his first year in Kansas, Mr. Pareter remembers in July, 1884, while he was working in a wheat field near Halstead, Kansas, he happened to look across the prairie and saw a large white building.

"I wondered what it was," he said, "and when I asked the man for whom I was working he replied saying it was the Mennonite seminary." this was the Halstead seminary at Halstead, Kansas, later moved to Newton, Kansas, and that was the forerunner of Bethel college.

Have Travelled 46,000 Since Marriage

In 1893 he married Mary Goggin, a dark-haired Irish lass of Madison, Wisconsin. During the forty-five years Mr. and Mrs. Pargeter have been married they have travelled about 46,000 miles on train and ship touring Europe, Canada, Mexico, Hawaii, and the United States. In 1923 the two spent six months in England, the homeland of their forefathers.

Speaking of his mother, the farmer-painter related, as a girl, she was a servant to Bishop Hamilton. One day when Queen Victoria with her two young daughters and son, Edward VII, grandfather of the present king of England, came to call on bishop Hamilton at Salisbury cathedral his mother helped take care of the royal youngsters.

"I discovered after sixty-eight years and two months of age that I had the knack of painting," Mr. Pareter explained as he led the way into a five-room wing of his farm home completely filled with paintings, Indian lore, and antiques. Besides himself having painted around 150 pictures of woodland, mountain, and landscape scenes, he has been collecting the works of other artists, coral from the Hawaiian islands, and lamps fashioned out of sea shells from southern Italy.

Paints and Makes Furniture as Hobby

He not only loves his hobby of painting but makes furniture — tables and picture stands — from the common Kansas countryside hedge. His carving and staining process disguises completely the ordinary wood used mainly as fuel by Kansas farmers.

Although his education in school went no further than the fifth grade, Mr. Pareter declares "I have never stopped trying to learn" and is greatly interested in seeing the young boys and girls of today go on and get a college education. With that in mind he and Mrs. Pargeter have made a contribution to the Bethel College Memorial fund.

A beautiful picture of the Christ praying in the Garden of Gethsemane was given to the school about two years ago by Mr. and Mrs. Pargeter. It is displayed in the forepart of the college chapel.