September 15, 1981

Mary Celestia Parler died, less than a year after her husband, noted Ozark folklore collector Vance Randolph, died. Parler was responsible for developing and implementing the most extensive folklore research project in Arkansas history. She was a professor of English and folklore at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County). Through her vast knowledge and appreciation of Arkansas culture, she enabled future generations to glimpse Arkansas’s cultural history, much of which remains only in the stories, songs, and images she collected with the help of her students and assistants. The work of Parler was revisited in 2005 when the University Libraries’ Special Collections department hosted a two-day conference, “A Collector in Her Own Right: Reassessing Mary Celestia Parler’s Contribution to Ozark Folklore.”