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The Fort Parker Massacre and Montgomery County

by Robin Montgomery

On May 19, 1836 several hundred Comanche and Kiowa  Warriors attacked Fort Parker in present Limestone County, Texas.  Herein was the framework upon which developed one of the most heart-rending dramas in American History, a drama destined to delay until 1875 the closing of the Indian Wars in Texas. Players in
this drama included, in a fundamental way, the Parkers of the original Montgomery County area. We will look at a few members of this remarkable family and explore the Parker connection to Ft. Parker.

Daniel Parker was a preacher. With his brother, James W., he visited Texas in 1832, where he learned that he could not start a church in Texas. He could, however, return to his homeland and start one, then bring that church to Texas. This Daniel did and he performed perhaps the first Christian wedding in Texas on soil later included in the original Montgomery County.

Daniel Parker, a minister, was head of the committee at the Consultation in 1835 which created the Texas Rangers. His brother, Silas, a ranger, met death at the Ft Parker massacre, while Silas’s son, John, and daughter, Cynthia Ann, were taken captive by the Comanche’s. Cynthia Ann became the wife of the
Comanche War Chief and the mother of Quanah Parker, the last and greatest of the American Indian chiefs. Cynthia Ann’s infant daughter died on Montgomery County soil, where Cynthia Anne was, for a few years, with her remaining Parker relatives.

Also a ranger, as well as a preacher, was the brother of Silas and Daniel, James W. Parker. With Silas and others of the Parker clan, he came to later original Montgomery County in the early eighteen thirties before leaving to establish Fort Parker.  After the massacre, he returned to Montgomery County.

In 1839, W. W. Shepperd, an early real estate broker in the town of Montgomery, publicly accused James W.  of causing the Ft. Parker Massacre by paying Indians counterfeit money for stolen horses. But Shepperd, it seems, was possessed of a basic tendency toward acrimonious verbosity. This is further indicated by his accusatory notice in the Telegraph and Texas Register on 12 February, 1836 berating the venerable Jared Groce, a major player in early Texas. The Texas Declaration of Independence, for example, was written at Groce’s Retreat.

James W. Parker was never formally accused of wrong doing. Like most of us, it appears he was a good person saddled with tendencies to occasionally surrender to questionable judgment.   

As administrators, legislators, lawmen and preachers, the Parkers of original Montgomery County were indeed a remarkable family.

Thank you.


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