In 1887, a newspaper article in the Sacramento Union described a cotton-picking picnic and the sending of a sample of the cotton to the Grange headquarters in Wisconsin (Sacramento Union Nov. 15, 1887, V. 58, No. 74).Jeremiah Parker was an African-American man who came to California in 1850 as a slave. He bought his freedom for $600 in 1853, and by 1857 had purchased his wife Rachel Parker's freedom for another $600. He moved to Pleasant Grove and owned land there by 1860. He bought 160 acres of land near Pleasant Grove from the Central Pacific Railroad (recorded in 1873: northwest quarter of section 25, 12-N 4-E, MDBM, Sutter County Records Book O page 530) and another 35 acres our of the southwest quarter of section 25 north of the Auburn Ravine from R. H. McClellan (Book O, page 529). He and his wife started a successful farm there and lived there for the rest of their lives. They had a son named David Nelson Parker who came to live on the farm in 1870 and eventually bought the farm from his father. Jeremiah Parker and Rachel Parker are buried in Pleasant Grove Cemetery on Howsley Road. At the time of Jeremiah Parker's death, there was a very nice article in the Sutter County Farmer, February 11, 1898.
Census, Sutter County Real Property Records, and newspaper articles document the Parkers of Pleasant Grove. Jeremiah Parker also purchased a biographical sketch that appears in Thompson and West's Pictorial History of Sutter County.
