Caroline Parry Woolley Collection

Caroline Keturah Parry was born in Cedar City, Utah, on October 31, 1885, to John Parry and Mary Ann Haight Parry. Her father was Iron County's representative to Utah's first legislature in 1897 and was largely responsible for getting the Branch Normal School located in Cedar City in 1897. Her mother was a daughter of Isaac C. Haight, early member of the Deseret Iron Company and mayor of Cedar City. Miss Parry graduated from the Branch Normal School in 1906. She taught school for over twenty-three years. During this time, she was an art student under Edwin Evans at the University of Utah where she received a Bachelor of Science in 1916.

In 1924 she gave up teaching to study art under Mahonri Young at the American School of Sculpture and Lee Lentelli in New York City. She entered the Art Students' League and spent three summers at Columbia University. During her third year in New York City she was awarded a scholarship to the Cooper Union Art School for Women where she studied under George Brewster. She was proficient in various mediums. Her favorite artistic medium was watercolors, and did leatherwork, weaving, needle work and sewing.

Miss Parry then returned to Salt Lake City and taught at the University of Utah for three years. During the Depression, she described herself as being on the "bread line," while teaching University Extension Summer Art classes and Public lecturing. While in Salt Lake, she taught pottery at the Lion House and assisted in a library survey of Utah to locate historical sources and writings. She was chosen as one of the ten Utah artists to work on the Depression-era Public Works Art Project (WPA). She lived and worked in the Indian Village across Coal Creek and produced statues of Ute and Paiute Indians in Cedar City. Eleven of which were exhibited in Cedar City in 1933. Some of which were given to the Cedar City Public Library and Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library. She made donations of furniture to the Cedar City Daughters of the Utah Pioneers and of her papers to the library at the College of Southern Utah.

She returned to New York City in 1937, but due to poor health she returned to Utah in 1938. Where she then began teaching at the Utah School for the Deaf and Blind in Ogden, Utah. In 1949, her health worsened and she spent a summer in Washington County regaining her health but never returned to teaching. She then began working on historical manuscripts on the life of her grandfather, Isaac C. Haight and the founding of the Branch Normal School.

At age 77, she married Dr. LeGrande Woolley, a widower. Around the time of his death in in 1965. She was hospitalized with a broken hip.

She died in Salt Lake City on March 13, 1967.