Ophelia Ann Parrish

Ophelia Ann Parrish was born to Dr William & Ann Mirah (Eastin) Parrish on July 5, 1850 in Springfield, MO. In 1869, she graduated a two-year school for young ladies in Columbia, MO called Christian Female College. She traveled extensively in Europe and the Holy Lands, taught for a time in a rural school, and was principal at Pierce City, 1880-81, before accepting her first long-term appointment as English and French teacher at Springfield High School. In 1890, she took a year’s leave to study at the Berlitz School of Languages in Berlin and at the Sorbonne and College of France in Paris. She then returned to Springfield High for an additional year before being named Assistant Superintendent of Schools in 1893. She left the Springfield system in 1899 to join the faculty at the First District Normal School.

Parrish was the first faculty appointment made by Normal School’s new president, John R Kirk, when he named her Supervisor of the Demonstration School. This was an elementary school operated on campus by the Normal faculty as practice for its student teachers. In 1903, when the decision was made to consolidate all the departmental libraries into one central college library, the Board of Regents selected her as the first full-time Librarian and gave her the assignment of organizing the new facility.

In addition to her year of study in Europe, Parrish continued her education by attending various institutes and summer sessions. She studied at the Martha’s Vinyard Summer School in 1890 and at the Cook County [IL] Normal over the summers of 1894-1895. After being named Librarian, she took courses in her new field at the Library School, Chautauqua, NY and spent the 1914-15 winter quarter training at Joseph F Daniels’ library school in Riverside, CA.

Off campus, Parrish was active in the Missouri Federation of Women’s Clubs. She served at least two terms as the State Chair of the organization’s Bureau of Literature and Reciprocity, which was the committee charged with helping local clubs organize their libraries in “regular library order.”

On October 29, 1915, Ophelia Parrish died. After a short memorial service at a funeral home in Kirksville, a large procession of students accompanied her casket to the Kirksville Wabash depot. President Kirk and several faculty members then took her home for burial at Springfield Cemetery.

The Gentry-Parrish Memorial Loan Fund was established in honor of Miss Parrish and Professor BP Gentry by students and faculty that fall with the goal of providing financial aid to students in need. Gentry died from injuries received in a street car accident in Kansas City less than a week after Parrish’s death. Other campus memorials to her include the Ophelia Parrish Building built in 1922 as well as an oil portrait by Jack Bohrer dedicated in 1948. “OP,” as the building is known on campus in oral shorthand, was for many years the home of Kirksville Junior High and served as the college’s practice school. It now houses the university’s art, music, and theatre departments with up-to-date classrooms, studios, performance halls, and art galleries. The portrait of Parrish hangs larger-than-life in Pickler Memorial Library’s Special Collections Department.