Parsada Charlotte Harris

She was born in 1860 in Georgia as the first child of Dean H Harris and Lydia M Banks.  She was known by many names, including Parrie, Priscilla, Pearie, Parizoda, and Parse.  Mary R Harris, her only sibling, was born the following year.  When she was 30, she married William Warren Rothgeb, son of Tobias Rothgeb and Esther Randall, on 21 May 1890 in Rhea, Tennessee.  Early in life, she was a Housekeeper and later was a Nurse.  Parsada died on 29 Sep 1939 in Point Pleasant, Mason, West Virginia.

Her father, Private Dean H Harris, mustered in 1861 at age 26 into Captain Jarrett’s “Gilmer Volunteers” company which subsequently became “F” Company Georgia 60th Infantry.  On December 13, 1862, he was killed in action at Hamilton’s Crossing in the 1st Battle of Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania, Virginia.  His burial is at Spotsylvania Confederate Cemetery.  Her widowed mother, Lydia M Banks Harris, remarried in the early 1870s to Benton Pence.  They had five children.  Lydia died after 1925.

Standing in Point Pleasant, one can look across the Ohio River to Gallia, where Parsada’s husband was born in 1861. William Warren Rothgeb and Parsada had four children – Charles Lyman, William Grover, Marjorie Mae, and Robert Barbee Rothgeb.  Early in life, he was a farm laborer and later a coal dealer and bookkeeper. Mr. Rothgeb was a proud member of Modern Woodmen of America, a fraternal benefits society to protect families following the death of the “breadwinner.”  He and their son Barbee and daughter-in-law Edna Juanita (Shaw) are buried on either side of her at Lone Oak Cemetery, on Route 62 at Sandhill Road, Point Pleasant, Mason, WV.

Her father’s death in The Civil War no doubt had a significant impact on her; Parsada was only two years old.  Before her death, she would also witness the Spanish-American War, the Great War, the loss of her son (Grover) from the Spanish Flu Epidemic of 1918, the Great Depression, the Holocaust, the Dust Bowl, and the start of World War II.  The Wright Brother First Flight occurred during her forties, and the Ford Model T was manufactured.