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Old Ft. Parker, which is conveniently located just 5 miles north of Groesbeck on Park Road 35 just one mile off Highway 14, is a reconstructed fort which pays tribute to the Parker family and other pioneers who paid a high price to settle in Texas from
Crawford County, Illinois, in 1833. Daniel Parker led those who wanted to go to Texas into the Predestinarian Baptist Church and they settled near the present city of
Elkhart, where a replica of their Pilgrim Baptist Church still stands in their memory. Other members of the group preferred to settle farther west, near the Navasota River. Elder John Parker and three of his sons, Silas, James and Benjamin, began in December of 1833 to clear land and to construct "Parker's Fort." The large stockade was built of split cedars, buried in the ground three feet and extending up some twelve feet. Two story blockhouses were erected at opposite corners, and within the fort were two rows of log cabins. In March of 1834, the fort was complete and the families moved in. |
| On the morning of May 19, 1936, while most of the men of the fort were working in the fields, a band of Indians came over the hill to the east of the fort. The Indians charged the fort before the gate could be closed. Five settlers were killed and five captured. The most famous of the captives was Cynthia Ann Parker. She was born in Illinois in 1827 and moved to Texas with her family at the age of six. Three short years later, at the age of nine, she saw her father killed, was caught and bound by rope, and taken miles away from the world she knew. After her capture, she was adopted by a Comanche family and later became the wife of Chief Peta Nacona. They had three children. In the winter of 1860, Captian Sul Ross and a group of Texas Rangers attacked the Nawkohnees camp along the Pease River. While trying to escape, Naduah (Cynthia Ann's Indian name) and her infant daughter were captured by Ranger Tom Kelliher. After learning her identity, Sul Ross returned her to her Uncle Issac in Ft. Worth; however, she could not readjust to Anglo-American society and died in October of 1864, at the age of 37, only six months after the death of her daughter, Prairie Flower. Legend maintains she died of a broken heart, longing to return to the free life of the Comanches. |
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The Indian abduction of Cynthia Ann Parker was one of many similar incidents, but her story captured the popular imagination and found a place in Texas folklore because of her unwillingness to return to the ways of her
childhood. Paradoxically, it was her son, Quanah, realizing the futility of further resistance, who helped the Comanches to adapt to the Anglo-American culture. The stockade at Old Fort Parker has been reconstructed twice, first during the Texas Centennial in 1936, and again in 1967. Visitors are welcome to visit Fort Parker, explore the cabins, climb the blockhouses, and recapture the atmosphere of that fateful spring day in 1936. |  One of the cabins at Old Fort Parker |
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Quanah Parker, 1852-1911, "Chief of the Comanche Indians." He took his mother's name after learning how she had adopted the Indian way of life. He then proved instrumental in helping the Comanches adapt to the white man's ways. Following his mother's recapture by the Texas Rangers, Quanah, a teenager, continued to grow in his father's legacy. He became a wise warrior and chief, defending Comanche Terrority after most Comanches had gone to the reservation. Finally, Quanah brought the remainder of the "people" to Fort Sill. He became determined to help Indians adapt to white man's ways after learning how his mother adapted to Indian ways. He established schools for the Comanches and helped them learn ranching and life on the reservation. In 1886, he was appointed Judge of Indian Offenses for several reservations in the Indian Territory, which later became Oklahoma. As great as Quanah was in war, he was even greater in peace. |
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