John Richard PARKER2,1,3,4
Life History
1830 |
Born in Fort Lemott, Crawford, Illinois.1 |
1915 |
Died in Mexico.1 |
1915 |
Buried in Mexico.2,1 |
Notes
- Family Data Collection - Individual Records
John Parker
Spouse Donna [should be Doña, the Spanish word for Lady, or Mrs] Juanita
parents: Silas Parker, Lucy
Birth 1830 Ft Lemott, Crawford, IL
Death Date 1915
Family Data Collection - Births
John Parker
Father Silas Mercer Parker
Mother Lucinda Duty
Birth 1830 Crawford IL, USA
A short biography appears in teh Texas State Handbook.
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PARKER, JOHN (1830-1915). John Parker, Indian captive, son of Lucinda (Duty) and Silas M. Parker, was born in 1830. In 1836 he and his sister, Cynthia Ann Parker, were captured by Comanche Indians at Fort Parker. James W. Parker, his uncle, made three trips in three years into the Indian country in an effort to rescue the captives. The Texas legislature, in 1845, appropriated $300 for John Parker's rescue, but the money was never used, as Parker was not located until he was grown, and he would not then return to Texas.
He grew to manhood among the Indians and while on a raiding party with them in Mexico fell in love with a Mexican girl named Donna Juanita. She accompanied him back to Texas and nursed him back to health after the Indians abandoned him on the Llano Estacado when he became sick with smallpox. Parker then refused to rejoin the Indians but went to Mexico and became a stockman and rancher.
He served in a Mexican company in the Confederate Army during the Civil War but refused to cross the Sabine River. After the war he returned to his family in Mexico, where he lived until 1915.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
James T. DeShields, Cynthia Ann Parker: The Story of Her Capture (St. Louis, 1886; rpts.: The Garland Library of Narratives of North American Indian Captivities, Vol. 95, New York: Garland, 1976; Dallas: Chama Press, 1991). Gustavus Adolphus Holland, History of Parker County and the Double Log Cabin (Weatherford, Texas: Herald, 1931; rpt. 1937). Grace Jackson, Cynthia Ann Parker (San Antonio: Naylor, 1959). Lena Clara Koch, "The Federal Indian Policy in Texas, 1845-1860," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 28 (January, April 1925). Women of Texas (Waco: Texian Press, 1972).
Llerena B. Friend
-- "Parker, John," Texas State Historical Association, https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fpa25
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From Find a Grave:
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John Richard Parker
Birth: 1830 Fort Lemott, Crawford, Illinois, USA
Death: 1915 Mexico
Father: Silas Mercer Parker Sr. b: 5 May 1804 in Duck River, Elbert, Georgia, USA
Mother: Lucinda "Lucy" Duty b: 1801 in Duck River, Elbert, Georgia, USA
Married: Doña Juanita b: EST 1832
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John Richard Parker
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
John Richard Parker (1830-1915?) was the brother of Cynthia Ann Parker and the uncle of Comanches chief Quanah Parker. An Anglo-Texas man of Scots-Irish descent who suffered being kidnapped from his natural family at the age of five by a Native American raiding party, he returned to the Native American people of his own free will after being ransomed back from the Comanche. He was a member of the large Parker frontier family that settled in east Texas in the 1830s. He was captured in 1836 by Comanches during the raid of Fort Parker near present-day Groesbeck, Texas.
Birth and early years:
John Parker was born in 1830 in Crawford County, Illinois the second oldest child of Silas Mercer Parker (1802-1836) and Lucy (Duty) Parker. His younger siblings were Silas Mercer Jr., and Orlena. His older sister was Cynthia Ann Parker.
This family and allied families, led by Silas' father John and brother Daniel, moved from Illinois to Texas in 1833. A large group under the family patriarch, Elder John Parker, settled near the headwaters of the Navasota River in present-day Limestone County. In 1834 they completed Fort Parker for their protection on the frontier.
On May 19, 1836, a large force of Comanche and allied warriors attacked the fort, and in what became known as the Fort Parker Massacre killed five men and captured two women and three children: Parker, his sister Cynthia Ann, Rachel Plummer and her son James Pratt Plummer as well as Elizabeth Duty Kellogg.
Captivity:
The Comanche's population had increased in large part by adopting captured women and children into the tribe, the former as child-bearing slaves and the latter as tribal members.[1] The Comanche made little distinction from tribal members born into the tribe, and those adopted in. Children under puberty were tested for intelligence, strength and courage, and if they seemed acceptable in all, they were adopted into the tribe and taught to be warriors. Grown men captured alive were generally killed, while women over puberty could expect gang rape and slavery.
Elizabeth Duty Kellogg was ransomed from the relatively benign Delaware Indians relatively quickly by Sam Houston. Rachel Plummer endured nearly two years of captivity among the Comanche, and never saw her oldest child, James Pratt Plummer, again. Her second child, born six months after her kidnapping, was murdered by the Comanche, who claimed that the child interfered with her work.
Parker was raised by the Comanche, as were his sister and younger cousin, John Pratt Plummer. The two boys were ransomed back in 1842. Plummer was returned to his grandfather and was able to readapt to white society, but Parker was unable to readapt and ran away from his family to return to the Comanches.
In Old Mexico:
As did most young Comanche, Parker participated in many raids into Mexico during the September full moon, the "Comanche Moon," when the dreaded Comanche raids literally devastated Mexico all the way to Central America. On one of these raids, he contracted smallpox. The Comanche were returning from the raid with captives, horses, and other plunder, but they stopped briefly when Parker became too ill to ride, somewhere just north of the Rio Grande in West Texas. The Comanche were terrified that they, too, would catch this dreaded killer, which had killed over half the tribe during the epidemic years, and they left Parker to ride out the illness, leaving a girl they had captured on the raid to take care of him. Rather than leave to try to return to her family, the girl nursed Parker back to health. He then returned to Mexico with the girl and restored her to her home and family, and he later married her.
Later life:
Parker returned to the United States during the Civil War and served with Confederate troops in Texas. After the war, he returned to Mexico, where he died in 1915 on his ranch. He appeared to have been the only one of the Parker children who lived a happy life.
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Parents:
Silas Mercer Parker (1804 - 1836)
Lucinda Duty Roberts (1811 - 1852)
Burial Unknown, in Mexico
Created by Alice Huitt Preston Nov 15, 2012
-- Find A Grave Memorial #100748475, http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=10074847
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