She taught music and piano at elementary school in Kansas City, Missouri from 1906 to 1913.
That year she married James Marcus Gilliam, and moved with him to St. Louis, where she taught music and lived the rest of her life.
[1] Born into slavery, her father had bought his freedom and became a noted abolitionist, inventor, and industrialist.
Before the American Civil War, he aided hundreds of slaves to escape by the Underground Railroad.
Hortense Parker and her two younger sisters studied music as children, in addition to traditional subjects.