Galena was a prosperous lead-mining town in the northwestern corner of Illinois, and it was there that Parker met a man who was working in his father-in-law’s leather goods store, having failed at several other ventures and left the army under circumstances that had not burnished his reputation.

The man’s name was Ulysses S.

Grant.

The two men became friends.

The Grant who Parker met in Galena was not yet the celebrated general or the future president — he was a man in his mid-thirties with a checkered past and an uncertain future, doing the unglamorous work of keeping his family financially afloat by working retail.

Parker was by that point an established professional, a skilled engineer with government contracts and a reputation in his field.

The friendship they formed in Galena was between equals, not between a powerful patron and a grateful supplicant.