Ezra PARISH (PARRISH)

                   A Brief History of My Father and Mother, Marcus de Lafayette Shepherd and Harriet Editha Shepherd by Sarah Caroline Shepherd Maeser:

       My mother, Harriet Editha Parrish Shepherd, was born Aug. 17, 1831 in the same little house in which her grandfather, Nathan Parrish lived, near the eastern shore of Lake Ontario in Brownville, Jeff., NY.  Her parents were Ezra Parrish and Susannah Sherwin.  Their ancestors on both sides were staunch American patriots, most, if not all of the fathers and grandfathers having been soldiers or officers in the Continental Army.
       The Parrish family joined the Church soon after its organization, and passed through all the trials of those early days.  In Nauvoo they lived near the prophet and the two families were intimate friends.  My grandfather (Ezra, son of Nathan) having been raised near the Great Lakes was a good sailor and could handle almost any kind of craft.
       Many times when the prophet found it necessary to slip away from his enemies, my grandfather carried him in pitch darkness in his canoe across the raging Mississippi.  My mother said that several times after her family had been driven across the river from Nauvoo, she and her father would return in the canoe at night and slip around to their home to get whatever articles might have been left there, including unfinished cloth from the loom.
       Both the Shepherd and the Parrish families started for Utah in 1847.