Maud Theresa Parker
Ely and Minnie Parker's only child was born August 14, 1878 in Fairfield, Connecticut. Her given name was Maud Theresa, but Ely also called her Ah-weh-ee-yo, which in Seneca means "Beautiful Flower." Yet there was nothing Seneca about her upbringing. Maud was baptized into the Episcopal Church and educated at St. Mary's boarding school in New York City. She never visited Tonawanda, and because her mother was white, Maud could never be enrolled as a member of the Seneca Nation.
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All descriptions and photographs of Maud paint the portrait of an unusually beautiful child. She was fair of skin, had dark wavy hair, and had her mother's "brilliant" eyes, but she had her father's energy and spirit. Bernard Van Rensselaer was impressed with the fifteen-year-old he met in 1893; Maud was on vacation with her parents in Pawling, New York, and Van Rensselaer said the child simply loved to run: "She was as fast as a deer! The hotel we stayed at had a lovely park with pavement all around it and the kids ran races. Maud could beat all of them, including the boys. Kids teased her saying that she could run so well because she was an Indian -- and then she would stomp her feet and say, "I'm a real American and the only one here." Maud was very intense, excitable, and Ely Parker was very cute with her, he would quiet her down."
Not much is known about Maud Parker's adult years. Sometime around the turn of the century, she was married to Arthur Bullard, and moved to his hometown of Wayland, Massachusetts. A few years later, Minnie Parker joined them, living with the couple until her death in 1932.
Van Rensselaer conversation
courtesy of William Armstrong