Parker House, Jefferson City

The website actually calls this AirBNB Parker's Place. I think that is because there are other houses in the country with the same name that have websites. You can read the history of the Parker Place House on their website. It is lengthy. We did not realize it had such great history when we first booked it and stayed the first night. When we took the Missouri State Penitentiary tour and learned that the prison labor built the houses around the prison, we wondered if the house we were staying in was built by the prisoners. Sure enough! It was!

We confirmed that it had a history when I spied it on the informational display at the Missouri State Penitentiary Museum. That caused me to look into it more on the internet. I share a little bit of the history in the above video, but you can search the internet to learn more on your own. Mr. Parker ran a business inside the prison walls with prison labor. I'm not so sure I would want to live next to a prison, much less a prison with the most violent offenders and all of the daily killings going on. Yet even his children grew up in the home. The prison is known for its ghosts and I have to admit I was a little intimidated by that when drifting off to sleep. I think ghosts tend to stay confined to the place they died, or at least that is the way movies portray it. Hopefully none died in the house we stayed in, but rather just across the street. I do not really believe in ghosts of the dead, but then again, there is a twig of doubt in the back of my mind that it may be true as well. That twig can grow in circumstances like this. It is a bit creepy.

The prisoners made shoes for Mr. Parker who in turn gave some of the money back to the prison for their financial support. It was ultimately all about making money for Mr. Parker.

This is our view of the Missouri State Capitol when we arrived late at night.

We woke up on our 38th anniversary and snapped a photo of ourselves in the huge mirror.

There is a mural across the street from the Parker House and we had a bit of fun posing with it.