Frances Margaret "Peggie" Parsons and her twin sister, Hester "Polly" Parsons, were born in El Cajon, California, to Harry Parsons and Hester Tancre Parsons. The twins were discovered to be deaf at the age of five. They attended a school for the deaf in Berkeley, California, but when the Great Depression struck the family moved to Tahiti in 1935. They lived there for six years, with the mother homeschooling the girls, but returned to the mainland US when Japan expanded into the Pacific during World War II. Parsons graduated from the Berkeley School for the Deaf in 1943 and then attended Gallaudet College for a few years, but withdrew in 1945 due to ill health. In 1945, she also married Vincent Neitzie and had two daughters with him, Valerie West (nicknamed Bunny) and Vincette Dee (nicknamed Vindee). Parsons and Neitzie divorced in 1963, and Frances returned to Gallaudet to complete her education, earning a BA in art history in 1967. During this time, she often traveled abroad to study art. After her graduation, Parsons taught English at the Maryland School for the Deaf and then joined Gallaudet's Tutorial Center as a tutor in English and Spanish. In 1971, Parsons was invited by Gallaudet's Dr. Mervin Garretson to visit deaf schools in Argentina and see how the deaf were taught there. She was shocked to find that the Argentine schools still used a strict oral approach and that deaf children were frequently mistreated or neglected by their teachers. As a result, she began traveling to deaf schools worldwide to teach about the advantages of manual education over oralism, including visits to the Bahamas, Iran, and India. In 1973, Parsons joined Gallaudet's Art Department as an associate professor of art history, and a year later earned her master's degree from the University of Maryland. In 1974, she became a Peace Corps consultant and helped to establish a program for deaf Peace Corps volunteers in the Philippines. Two years later, she took a year-long trip through Australia, Asia, and Africa, teaching and lecturing on manual education. Further educational trips throughout Asia, Africa, and Europe followed during the 1970s and 1980s. Over the course of her life, Parsonss visited every continent, including Antarctica in 2006 at the age of 83. She published several books inspired by her travels, including Sound of the Stars, a diary of her early life in Tahiti; I Didn't Hear the Dragon Roar, based on a 1986 trip to China; and "I Dared!", an essay in the book Deaf Women's Lives about her educational trips in the 1970s. She also published I Knew Elizabeth Peet: Queen of Gallaudet, a book of memories and anecdotes about Elizabeth Peet. Parsons was dismissed from the Art Department in 1988. She then spent five years as Gallaudet's Coordinator of International History Collections before retiring in 1993. She contributed generously to the Gallaudet University Archives, and also created the Frances M. Parsons International Endowment Fund to support English teachers for the deaf abroad. Frances Parsons passed away in December 2013 after being struck by a car. Frances's twin sister, Hester Parsons (1923- ), nicknamed Polly or Pollai, is also represented in this collection with some correspondence and genealogical material. There is also a small amount of material from Frances's mother, Hester T. (Tancre) Parsons (?-1967). A native of Florida, Hester T. Parsons graduated from San Diego State College in 1927 and taught in San Diego and Arizona.