[1][2] On May 1, 1860, when she was about 21, Parker married John Edward Bouligny, a recently elected congressman from Louisiana, in what The Washington Star called "perhaps the most brilliant wedding that has ever taken place in the Federal metropolis.

[4] Bouligny was the only member of the Louisiana congressional delegation who refused to resign his seat when the state seceded, so the couple mostly remained in Washington during the Civil War, living at her father's home.

Her letters and diaries from the trip later became the basis for her first book Bubbles and Ballast, which was subtitled "being a description of life in Paris during the brilliant days of the empire; a tour through Belgium and Holland, and a sojourn in London.

[10] In 1867, as part of settling a long-standing property dispute, the 39th Congress passed an act, awarding one-sixth of the land granted to Jean Antoine Bernard d'Autrive in 1765 to the heirs of John Edward Bouligny — his widow Mary Elizabeth and their two daughters — in recognition of his loyalty to the Union.

In 1888, the remarried Mary Elizabeth sought to claim the promised land, but her petition was rejected by the Department of the Interior, a decision affirmed a year later by the Supreme Court.