Cynthia Ann Parker: The Story of Her Capture at the Massacre of the Inmates of Par...

CONTEMPORARY with, and among the earliest of the daring and hardy pioneers that penetrated the eastern portion of the Mexican province of Texas, were the "Parker family," who immigrated from Cole county, Illinois, in the fall of the year 1833, settling on the west side of the Navasota creek, near the site of the present town of Groesbeck, in Limestone county, one or two of the family coming a little earlier and some a little later. The elder John Parker was a native of Virginia, resided for a time in Elbert County, Georgia, but chiefly reared his family in Bedford County, Tennessee, whence in 1818 he removed to Illinois. The family, with perhaps one or two exceptions, belonged to one branch of the primitive Baptist church, commonly designated as "two seed," or "hard shell" Baptists. In the spring of 1834 the colonist erected Parker's Fort, a kind of wooden barricade, or wall around their cabins, which served as a means of better protecting themselves against the numerous predatory bands of Indians into that, then, sparsely settled section.*