Fort Parker massacre

Fort Parker was established about north of present-day Groesbeck, Limestone County, Texas, United States, by John Parker, his sons, Benjamin, Silas, and James, with other members of the Pilgrim Predestinarian Baptist Church of Crawford County, Illinois. Led by John and Daniel Parker, they came to Texas in 1833. Most of the residents of the fort were part of the extended family of John and Sarah Parker. == Massacre ==

Soon the settlers were making their homes and farming the land. Several had built cabins on their farms, and used the fort for protection. attacked the inhabitants of Fort Parker. In her memoir, Rachel Plummer wrote that "one minute the fields (in front of the fort) were clear, and the next moment, more Indians than I dreamed possible were in front of the fort." One of the Indians approached the fort with a white flag. No one believed the flag was genuine. Silas Parker wanted the five men present to man the walls and fight as best they could. Benjamin Parker felt that by going out he could buy time for the majority of the women and children to flee out the back (small) gate. He felt that there was simply no way that five men would be able to hold the Indians out more than a second or two, as they could use ropes to scale the walls. He felt that the war party would then kill everyone in the fort, and the unsuspecting men in the fields. He argued with Silas that they had to barter their lives for time for everyone else. ==Fort Parker inhabitants on 19 May 1836==

• Elder John Parker (aged 77 years 8 months, killed) and second wife, Sarah Pinson Duty • Benjamin F. W. Parker (aged 48 years, killed) • Isaac Parker (aged 43 years 1 month) • James William Parker (aged 38 years 10 months) and wife, Martha Duty • Sarah Parker (aged 18 years 9 months) and husband, Lorenzo Dow Nixon • Rachel Parker (aged 17 years 2 months, captured) and husband, Luther Martin Thomas Plummer (aged approximately 24 years 11 months) • James Pratt Plummer (aged 1 year 4 months, captured) • James William Parker (aged 6 years 10 months) • Francis Marion Parker (aged 4 years 5 months) • Silas Mercer Parker (aged 32 years, killed) and wife, Lucinda Duty (aged approximately 34 years 11 months) • Cynthia Ann Parker (aged 8 years 7 months, captured) • John Richard Parker (aged approximately 5 years 11 months, captured) • Silas Mercer Parker (aged approximately 1 year 11 months) • Orlena Parker (aged approximately 11 months) • Elizabeth Duty Kellogg (aged approximately 39 years, captured) • Elisha Anglin • Abram Anglin • Seth Bates • Silas Bates • George E.Dwight and wife Malinda Frost Dwight • Elizabeth Dwight • David Falkenbury • Evan Falkenbury • Samuel Frost (killed) and wife • Robert Frost (killed) • Other Frost children • Oliver Lund Note: Killed were Samuel Frost, Robert Frost, John Parker, Benjamin Parker and Silas Parker. Captured were Elizabeth Kellogg, Cynthia Parker, John Parker, Rachel Plummer and James Plummer; all of them were later ransomed or freed. Their captivity took several years, except Mrs. Kellogg, who was ransomed within 3 months. Another 21 were not captured. == Aftermath ==

Cynthia Ann Parker One of the captives was a nine-year-old girl, Cynthia Ann Parker, daughter of Silas and Lucinda Duty Parker. Cynthia Ann lived with the Comanches for nearly 25 years. She married Comanche chief Peta Nocona and was the mother of three children, including Quanah Parker. In 1860, she was among a Native American party captured by Texas Rangers at the Battle of Pease River. Ironically, Cynthia Parker was the victim of two massacres which destroyed her life. The first, the attack on Fort Parker in 1836, killed her father and left her among the Comanche for nearly 25 years. The second, a massacre of the Comanche Band of her husband, the Noconis, at the Battle of Pease River left her a prisoner among the whites. She was identified by her uncle, Isaac Parker, and returned to his home in Texas. Cynthia Ann never readjusted to the Anglo society, and died at the age of 43 in 1870 after starving herself to death after her daughter, Prairie Flower, had caught influenza and died from pneumonia. She was originally buried in Poyner, Henderson County, Texas, but her son, Quanah, had her reburied next to his future grave at his home, the Star House, in Cache, Oklahoma. In 1957 the State of Oklahoma moved their graves to Old Post Cemetery in Fort Sill, Commanche County, Oklahoma, on what is known as Chief's Knoll. In 1965 the state of Texas had Prairie Flower moved from her grave in Edom, Van Zandt County, Texas to join her mother and brother. John Richard Parker Cynthia Ann's brother John Richard Parker was ransomed back in 1842 along with his cousin, James Pratt Plummer. He was unable to adapt to white society and ran away, returning to the Comanche. During a Comanche raid into Mexico, he contracted smallpox, and the Comanche war party that he was a member of abandoned him, leaving a Mexican girl that they had captured to care for him. After she nursed him back to health, he returned her to her family and eventually married her, settling in Mexico and becoming a stockman and rancher. During the American Civil War, he served in a Mexican Company within the Confederate Army. After the war, he returned to his life in Mexico, living there until he died in 1915. Rachel Plummer Rachel Plummer, the 17-year-old wife of Luther Plummer, daughter of James Parker, and cousin to Cynthia Parker and her brother John, was held captive and enslaved by the Comanche for two years before being ransomed by her father. During captivity she gave birth, but the baby was soon tortured and murdered by her Comanche master because the child interfered with her work. Her book on her captivity, ''Rachael Plummer's Narrative of Twenty-One Months' Servitude as a Prisoner Among the Comanchee Indians'', was issued in Houston in 1838. This was the first narrative about a captive of Texas Indians published in the Republic of Texas, and it was a sensation not just there, but throughout the United States and even abroad. Rachel died in 1840, in childbirth, a year after being ransomed. James Pratt Plummer James Pratt, son of Luther Martin Thomas Plummer and Rachel Parker Plummer, was separated from his mother (who never knew about his further fate) and was soon given away to another Comanche band. Late in 1842 he was ransomed and in 1843 reunited with his grandfather James W. Parker. Parker refused to return his grandson to his father, claiming that Luther Plummer had not even paid any money for his family's ransom. Even when the latter appealed successfully to the Governor of Texas, Parker refused to return his grandson. Luther Plummer later remarried and fathered another child, and then did not pursue the matter any further. James Pratt Plummer married twice and had four children. He enlisted in the Confederate Army during the Civil War and died from pneumonia in 1862 after suffering from typhoid. Elizabeth Duty Kellogg In late May 1836, Elizabeth Kellogg was taken by a band of Kichai Indians, which she took for "Kitchawas". In summer, Delaware Indians purchased Mrs. Kellogg and sold her to her brother-in-law James W. Parker in August 1836 for 150 dollars (the money was sent by Sam Houston). She was reunited with her sister Martha Duty on September 6, 1836. Her life after captivity lacks documentation, though it is known that she had died by 1861. ==People closely related to the fate of the captured inhabitants==

James W. Parker James W. Parker, who was working in the fields when the raid began, spent much of the rest of his life, and most of his fortune, searching for his daughter Rachel, his grandson James, his niece Cynthia, and his nephew John Richard. After many near-death escapes, he finally settled with his family. John Wayne's character Ethan Edwards, in the John Ford Western The Searchers, was modeled by author Alan Le May after Parker and others affected by child abductions. Former Dallas Morning News columnist Frank X. Tolbert in his book An Informal History of Texas entitled one of his book's chapters "Was Uncle James (Parker) The Villain" which expressed an entirely different take on the reverend. James W. Parker was Cynthia Ann Parker's uncle, Rachel Plummer's father, and Rachel's son James Pratt Plummer's grandfather. Sam Houston responded to "Luther" Thomas Martin Plummer in a letter that: "Reverend Parker had quite a bad reputation with most all he ever had business dealings." Houston did not trust the judgement of Parker and as that chapter of Tolbert's book relates Houston just could not believe that Reverend Parker would not return James Pratt Plummer to his natural father. Quanah Parker Quanah Parker, son of Cynthia Ann Parker, became a leader among the Quahadi Comanches. After most of the Comanches and other tribes on the Staked Plains were defeated, Parker and his group surrendered to authorities and were forced to an Indian reservation in Oklahoma Territory. The Quahadis were the very last tribe left on the Staked Plains. Quanah Parker was made chief of all the Comanche tribes on the reservation. Shortly before his own death in 1911, he arranged for the disinterment of his mother and sister and had them reburied in a plot next to his own at the Post Oak Cemetery near Cache, Oklahoma. Congress passed a special allotment to fund the reburial. The three were moved in 1957 to the Old Post military cemetery in Fort Sill, Oklahoma. ==See also==