“Joseph Pinkney Parker was born in Coffee County, Alabama in 1839. He had just finished as a student at Spring Hill Academy when the War broke out. He left immediately for the front, leaving behind him on a well-stocked plantation, his sister and the slaves which every well-to-do Alabaman possessed at that time. Four years later, he returned to find his farm overgrown with weeds, his stock and his slaves disappeared and his sister embittered by her treatment received at the hands of the Northern soldiers. The property was soon eaten up by taxes, so he took a position as a “walker” on the railroad tracks carrying with him maul and spikes to keep the tracks repaired.

He became a school teacher, but the parents of the children were too poor to pay the salary, or even to clothe the pupils properly. As years went on, he did regain some of his financial position and built for himself and his family a very comfortable home in Troy, just a block or two from the famous trace which Andrew Jackson used in his battles against the Indians in Florida.

Pink was a devout member of the Baptist Church. He never called his wife anything but “Darling” and taught his children to do the same. He became a police officer in the little town of Troy and a much-respected citizen. But he had one obsession which was so deeply instilled in him that he never was able to overcome it; a deep and lasting hate for the North, its people, and particularly for the man who was the sixteenth President of the United States ; a man so great that, today, Abraham Lincoln is revered in the South, together with the famous champion of the Lost Cause, Robert E. Lee.

As Pink Parker went on nursing his wrath from year to year, the North and the name of Lincoln would cause him to burst forth into the most impassioned flights of profanity which not merely astonished but shocked his friends. The pastor of the Baptist Church labored with him to stop these outbursts. But they continued and Pink was finally removed from the church rolls for his profanity. Rather ruefully, Pink remarked to a friend, “It wasn’t quite fair. I know all the deacons in that church and any one of them can cuss better than I can.”

Time went on and each succeeding April 15, Pink would make for himself a paper badge indicating that this date was the “Anniversary of the Death of Old Abe Lincoln.” Years passed, the idea came into his head that he would erect a monument to the memory of John Wilkes Booth. Apparently, he did not share this intention with anyone, so it was a surprise to the citizens of Troy when this monument, some four feet high, was erected in the yard of Pink’s home. His neighbors did not like the idea, but they did like Pink Parker. The strange thing about the erection of this monument is the fact that it was not erected until 1906, in spite of the fact that the newspapers of the 20’s stated that it had been erected by popular subscription by the citizens of Troy in 1866.