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| Parnell Green, 1898-1974 |
Parnell Green was born in Layton,
Utah, on September 20, 1898, the son of Albert Kirkman Green and Florence
Layton Green. (Florence was a
daughter of Christopher Layton, a Mormon pioneer who crossed the Great Plains
with Brigham Young to establish the Mormon settlement in Utah; he founded the
town of Layton.) Parnell married Dorothea Frease
in 1930, and together they had five children, one of whom died as an
infant. The fourth of them was Helen.
He was a cattleman throughout his life, often running
several thousand head, which he pastured in Wyoming in the summer and in
California in the winter. To avoid
the delays and damage to the cattle often occurring in transporting them by
railroad, in the 1930s he invented the cattle truck (a modern version of which
appears in the background of the picture above), which was faster, and because
of its compartmentalization was less injuring to the cattle. His trucking business became a
companion to his ranching.
Although the second of six siblings who survived beyond
infancy, he became the acknowledged head of family after his father died. He was known to his children and
grandchildren as a stern but caring paterfamilias, who liked to have his family
around him. Dorothea liked to call
him "the old goat."