Ely Parker

A lifelong friend and trusted aide of Ulysses S. Grant, Ely Parker rose to the top in two worlds, that of his native Seneca Indian tribe and the white man's world at large. He studied law but was refused admission to the bar as he was not considered a citizen. He studied engineering and while working on a government project in Galena, Illinois, he met U.S. Grant. This is a person that has had an impact on the Civil War, and he is part Indian which I am also which I thought was pretty cool so I picked Ely parker to do my Civil War biography on. Even though he wasn't successful throuout his hole life, in which he lived a pretty good one in the end.

Ely Samuel Parker, Seneca Indian, engineer and soldier, was born near Indian Falls, NY in 1828, during a jouncing, 30-mile horseback ride as his parents went home to their Tonawanda Reservation in western New York.

English: Pres. U.S. Grant (between 1870 and 1880) ...

English: Ely S. Parker, Native American civil engi...

Parker Holland - BJJ @ Grappler's Quest

Elizabeth and William Parker called their new son Ha-sa-no-an-da. And they would raise him within in the traditions of the once-dominant tribe of the Haudenosaunee (also known as Iroquois). But the 18th and 19th centuries brought rapid change that would define Ha-sa-no-an-da's early years. As white settlements pressed in on Tonawanda, Elizabeth Parker sent her son to a Baptist Mission school and at Yates and Cayuga Acadamies,where he could get a mainstream education. There, Ha-sa-no-an-da gained a new identity; he adopted the first name of the school's minister and began calling himself Ely Parker.

He studied law but was refused admission to the bar as he was not considered a citizen. He studied engineering and while working on a government project in Galena, Illinois, he met U.S. Grant. When Parker first tried to enlist in the Union...