Cynthia Parker Biography

Foard County, Texas Biographies

Cynthia Ann Parker

The mother of Quanah Parker was born in 1825 to Silas M. and Lucy Duty Parker in Crawford County, Illinois. Her family joined a wagon train and traveled to east Texas where the settlers built Fort Parker on the headwaters of the Navasota River near the area that would later become Groesbeck, Texas Cynthia's uncle, John Parker organized the Texas branch of the Primitive Baptist Church.

Cynthia parker

Many old Texans will remember the massacre at Fort Houston, Texas, in 1833; the capture of women and children by the Indians, and the subsequent recovery of Cynthia Parker, after some twenty years captivity among the savages. The following letter of inquiry will, doubtless, meet the eyes of some one who can give the desired information. The last information on this subject possessed by the News placed Cynthia Anne Parker with her relatives in Parker county, probably in the family of her uncle, the venerable Isaac Parker, long a member of the Texas Congress, who spent years in endeavoring to recover the captives:

Headquarters Fort Sill, Indian Territory, May 19,1875.
J Capt. E. J. Strang, A. Q. M. U. S. A.. Denison, Texas.

*Sir —
Cit-ra, a Qua-ha-do Comanche, who came into this post a few days ago, is the Son of Cynthia, or Cynthia Anne Parker, a white woman, and is very desirous of finding out the whereabouts of his mother if Still alive, who was captured by the Indians near the falls of the Brazos nearly forty years ago, while yet a girl, and captured by the United States troops eighteen years ago, since which time she has remained in Texas. She took with her to Texas a little girl and left with the Indians two boys, one of whom has since died, and the surviving one, (Citra,) who was here, makes inquiry concerning her and his sister. Any information you can obtain as to this woman, dead or alive, or of her daughter, will be gratefully received. Very respectfully your obedient servant, K. S. Mackenzie, Colonel Fourth Cavalry, commanding post.
[The Galveston Daily News, (Houston, TX) Saturday, May 29, 1875]

Cit-ra
(Quanah Parker)
a Qua-ha-do Comanche
Son of Cynthia Parker

INTERESTING REMINISCENCES
LETTER FROM CAPT. L. S. ROSS — THE FORT PARKER MASSACRE.

In 1858 I returned from school and found Maj. Van Dorn was at Bellnap organizing an expedition against the Comanches, then supposed to be somewhere on the head waters of the Arkansas or Canadian rivers. I went at once to the Indian Agency and raised 135 Waco, Tehuacana, Tonk and Caddo warriors, and with them reported to Maj. Van Dorn for cooperation in the expedition. He sent me in advance to the Wichita mountains, while he followed with trains, supplies and troops, exacting to establish a depot there for supplies, etc. When I reached the mountains I .sent a Waco and Tehuacana Indian to the Wichita Village, 75 miles: east on the Wichita river, hoping to learn through them where the Comanches were to be found. When the scouts came in sight of the village they found to their surprise " Buffalo Hemp" with his band of Comanches, (the very ones we were hunting,) encamped there, trading and gambling with the Wichitas. The scouts concealed themselves until dark, and then stole two Comanche horses and returned to me to report the facts. With difficulty I convinced Major Van Dorn that the Indians could be relied upon, and induced him to turn the direction of his columns, and by a forced march, reached the village at sunrise Oct. , 1st, 1808, surprising and almost completely destroying that band of the Comanches, capturing their horses, tents, supplies and several prisoners, among whom I captured the white "Lizzie" subsequently raised and educated by my mother, and now with her in California, and of whose family or parentage no trace has been discovered. For their services Major Van Dorn gave the Indians of my command the spoils captured, horses, etc. I received for my pay a dangerous gunshot wound, still a painful reminder of the occasion, together with a petition, signed on the battlefield by every United States officer present, requesting my appointment, by the government the regular army, for distinguished gallantry, and after due time came a complimentary order from Gen. Win field Scott, which documents I still have, but have never made, or attempted to make, use of them. This led to my constant service on the frontier, in command of ranging companies, until the year 18G0, when, under a commission from Governor Houston, I was stationed near Bellnap, with a ranging company for frontier protection, and about the last of November a party of Comanches came into Parker county and committed serious depredations, effecting their escape with many stolen horses. This created great excitement on the frontier, and, in co-operation with about seventy volunteer citizens, under the command of Captain Jack Cuington, of Palo Pinto, and in command of forty of my own men, and a sergeant and twenty men of the Second U. a. Cavalry, sent at my request by Captain N. G. Evans, commanding at Camp Cooper, I determined to follow these Indians to their villages and punish them. On the 18th of December, early in the Say, on the headwaters of Pease river, near some cedar mountains, I came suddenly upon a village, which they were preparing to abandon, having their horses packed, etc. The citizen company was several miles in the rear, and twenty of the rangers were on foot, their horses having broken down, as we had been traversing a, sand desert for several days, and subsisting our horses entirely on the bark and limbs of small cotton woods. With the twenty rangers and twenty United States troops, I determined to attack at once, as we were not then discovered, and could take them at disadvantage, and in less than half an hour had complete possession of all their supplies and 350 head of horses, killing many of them, and completely scattering the others. During the fight two Indians, well mounted, attempted to escape to the mountains, about six miles distant, and Lieut. Tom Killiher, being well mounted, started in pursuit of one and Lieut. Somerville and myself after the other. Lieut. S. being a heavy man, his horse soon failed, and I had the chase to myself for two miles, when I came up with Mohee, the Comanche chief of that party of Indians, and, after a short fight, in which ho wounded my horse, I killed him and took possession of his shield, quiver, lance and head- dress, which are now with the archives at Austin. In a few minutes Lieut. Tom Killiher came back to where I was, with an Indian squaw and a young child in her arms, and bitterly cursing his luck for having ran his favorite horse so far and hard, just to catch an old squaw. After looking at her for the second time I told Tom he had captured a white woman, which he refused to believe until I directed his attention to the color of her eyes. On the way back to where the thickest of the fight had occurred I came upon a small Comanche boy who had been picked up, first by Lieutenant Sublett and thrown down, and then by others, with like result, and, fearing that he might eventually be killed by some of the more reckless men, I took him up behind me and carried him back to where I went into camp and there named him "Pease," and he is the boy now about Waco. At the camp I called up a Mexican who had been raised by the Comanches, and through him soon gained sufficient information from the woman to convince me that she had been captured in childhood from some of the early Texas settlers, and her account of her capture by the Indians justified the opinion that she was one of the Parker children. On reaching the settlements information was conveyed to her uncle, and he came to see her, and soon, by old of a Mexican interpreter, convinced himself that she was Cynthia Ann Parker, his niece, who had been from her early childhood with the Indians. Two of her sons by her Indian husband were killed in the battle.

This is a correct history of all the transactions relating to the several captives taken at different times by my command, and you can make what use you will of it. It seems hard that those to whom the credit is due should be defrauded out of it, since, indeed, they have never received any pay from the State of Texas for the long service rendered. I received some State warrants and have them yet, but presume they are worthless.
• Very truly your friend, L. S. Ross.
To JOHN ROBINSON, Robinsonville, Texas.
[The Galveston Daily News, (Houston, TX) Thursday, June 03, 1875; Issue 125; col D]

Eds. Hews—A note in the News from Col. Mackenzie, of May 19, inquires to the survivors of the Parker's Fort massacre. The Fort was located between the present towns of Groesbeck and Springfield, and was founded by the family whose name it bore, in 1835. After the battle of San Jacinto the citizens felt secure, and the gates were neglected On the 19th' of May, 1836, (thirty-nine years from the date of Col. Mackenzie's letter,) a body of 300 Comanche and Caddo Indians approached the place, pretending friendship. They inquired for a beef and a spring where they could camp. Benjamin Parker went outside the inclosure and pointed to a herd of cattle and stream of water. Without moving he was killed, and the savages entered the Fort. Out of the thirty-four persons then in the place but four were able to bear arms—John Parker, Sr. seventy-nine years old, his son, Silas M. Parker, and Samuel Frost and his son, Robert Frost. These were all killed and Mrs. John Parker wounded. Twenty- three of the party made their escape, and were six days without food before reaching the settlements, sixty miles down the Navasota river. The Indians took previously Mrs. Kellogg, who was kept four months. Mrs. Plummer (daughter of James Parker) and her son, James Pratt. Mrs. P. was more than a year a prisoner, and then sold to a Missouri trader and recovered by her uncle. But died in less than a year after reaching her Texas home. A short time after her death her son, James Pratt Plummer, was restored to his family. He too, and his father, are now dead. The Indians also took Cynthia Anne Parker, nine years old, and her brother John, six years old. John by some means escaped from the Indians and married a Mexican woman, and settled upon the Rio Grande, where he was living when last heard from. In 1861(?) Captain Ross, of Waco, had a fight with the Indians on the extreme frontier and captured a white woman with a little child. They were brought to Camp Cooper. Col. Isaac Parker, (who still lives in Parker county, upwards of eighty-two years of ago) anxious to recover his long-lost niece, visited Camp Cooper. The woman had forgotten her native tongue, and her uncle was about giving up in despair when he told the interpreter that the one he was hunting was named Cynthia. The countenance of the woman at once brightened. She placed her hand upon her breast and said Cynthia! Cynthia! She had left two children with her husband, who was a head man of his tribe. Since their return to civilized life she and her girl have both died. It seems from Col. McKenzie's note that one of the children she left is dead, and the other, Citra, is now at Fort Sill, anxious to learn the fate of his family. H. S. T. [The Galveston Daily News, (Houston, TX) Thursday, June 03, 1875; Issue 125; col D]

A Clue to Cynthia Ann Parker.
Corsicana, June 1, 1875. Eds. News— The information you wish in regard to Cynthia Ann Parker can be obtained of Mr. O'Quinn, at O'Quinn's saw-mill, in Anderson county, near Kickapoo. She and her little girl were there some two years ago. W, H. Hamil.
[The Galveston Daily News, (Houston, TX) Friday, June 04, 1875; Issue 126; col E]

ANDERSON COUNTY. The Palestine Advocate, copying General McKenzie's letter of inquiry says; " We clip the above from the Galveston News. In reply we would state that Mrs. Cynthia Ann Parker and her child died in this county, and were buried in the old Pilgrim Church cemetery, twelve miles from Palestine. An account of her life and death is on file in the Advocate office, subject to Inspection by relatives or others." [The Galveston Daily News, (Houston, TX) Friday, June 04, 1875; Issue 126; col D]

Cynthia Parker is buried besides her children in Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

Cynthia Ann Parker
Mother of Quanah Parker
Chief of Comanche Indians
1827 - 1870
Parker Gravestone

Foard County, Texas Biographies

Cynthia Ann Parker The mother of Quanah Parker was born in 1825 to Silas M. and Lucy Duty Parker in Crawford County, Illinois. Her family joined a wagon train and traveled to east Texas where the settlers built Fort Parker on the headwaters of the Navasota River near the area that would later become Groesbeck, Texas Cynthia's uncle, John Parker organized the Texas branch of the Primitive Baptist Church.
Many old Texans will remember the massacre at Fort Houston, Texas, in 1833; the capture of women and children by the Indians, and the subsequent recovery of Cynthia Parker, after some twenty years captivity among the savages. The following letter of inquiry will, doubtless, meet the eyes of some one who can give the desired information. The last information on this subject possessed by the News placed Cynthia Anne Parker with her relatives in Parker county, probably in the family of her uncle, the venerable Isaac Parker, long a member of the Texas Congress, who spent years in endeavoring to recover the captives:
Headquarters Fort Sill, Indian Territory, May 19,1875. J Capt. E. J. Strang, A. Q. M. U. S. A.. Denison, Texas. Sir — Cit-ra, a Qua-ha-do Comanche, who came into this post a few days ago, is the Son of Cynthia, or Cynthia Anne Parker, a white woman, and is very desirous of finding out the whereabouts of his mother if Still alive, who was captured by the Indians near the falls of the Brazos nearly forty years ago, while yet a girl, and captured by the United States troops eighteen years ago, since which time she has remained in Texas. She took with her to Texas a little girl and left with the Indians two boys, one of whom has since died, and the surviving one, (Citra,) who was here, makes inquiry concerning her and his sister. Any information you can obtain as to this woman, dead or alive, or of her daughter, will be gratefully received. Very respectfully your obedient servant, K. S. Mackenzie, Colonel Fourth Cavalry, commanding post. [The Galveston Daily News, (Houston, TX) Saturday, May 29, 1875]*	Cit-ra (Quanah Parker) a Qua-ha-do Comanche Son of Cynthia Parker
INTERESTING REMINISCENCES LETTER FROM CAPT. L. S. ROSS — THE FORT PARKER MASSACRE. In 1858 I returned from school and found Maj. Van Dorn was at Bellnap organizing an expedition against the Comanches, then supposed to be somewhere on the head waters of the Arkansas or Canadian rivers. I went at once to the Indian Agency and raised 135 Waco, Tehuacana, Tonk and Caddo warriors, and with them reported to Maj. Van Dorn for cooperation in the expedition. He sent me in advance to the Wichita mountains, while he followed with trains, supplies and troops, exacting to establish a depot there for supplies, etc. When I reached the mountains I .sent a Waco and Tehuacana Indian to the Wichita Village, 75 miles: east on the Wichita river, hoping to learn through them where the Comanches were to be found. When the scouts came in sight of the village they found to their surprise " Buffalo Hemp" with his band of Comanches, (the very ones we were hunting,) encamped there, trading and gambling with the Wichitas. The scouts concealed themselves until dark, and then stole two Comanche horses and returned to me to report the facts. With difficulty I convinced Major Van Dorn that the Indians could be relied upon, and induced him to turn the direction of his columns, and by a forced march, reached the village at sunrise Oct. , 1st, 1808, surprising and almost completely destroying that band of the Comanches, capturing their horses, tents, supplies and several prisoners, among whom I captured the white "Lizzie" subsequently raised and educated by my mother, and now with her in California, and of whose family or parentage no trace has been discovered. For their services Major Van Dorn gave the Indians of my command the spoils captured, horses, etc. I received for my pay a dangerous gunshot wound, still a painful reminder of the occasion, together with a petition, signed on the battlefield by every United States officer present, requesting my appointment, by the government the regular army, for distinguished gallantry, and after due time came a complimentary order from Gen. Win field Scott, which documents I still have, but have never made, or attempted to make, use of them. This led to my constant service on the frontier, in command of ranging companies, until the year 18G0, when, under a commission from Governor Houston, I was stationed near Bellnap, with a ranging company for frontier protection, and about the last of November a party of Comanches came into Parker county and committed serious depredations, effecting their escape with many stolen horses. This created great excitement on the frontier, and, in co-operation with about seventy volunteer citizens, under the command of Captain Jack Cuington, of Palo Pinto, and in command of forty of my own men, and a sergeant and twenty men of the Second U. a. Cavalry, sent at my request by Captain N. G. Evans, commanding at Camp Cooper, I determined to follow these Indians to their villages and punish them. On the 18th of December, early in the Say, on the headwaters of Pease river, near some cedar mountains, I came suddenly upon a village, which they were preparing to abandon, having their horses packed, etc. The citizen company was several miles in the rear, and twenty of the rangers were on foot, their horses having broken down, as we had been traversing a, sand desert for several days, and subsisting our horses entirely on the bark and limbs of small cotton woods. With the twenty rangers and twenty United States troops, I determined to attack at once, as we were not then discovered, and could take them at disadvantage, and in less than half an hour had complete possession of all their supplies and 350 head of horses, killing many of them, and completely scattering the others. During the fight two Indians, well mounted, attempted to escape to the mountains, about six miles distant, and Lieut. Tom Killiher, being well mounted, started in pursuit of one and Lieut. Somerville and myself after the other. Lieut. S. being a heavy man, his horse soon failed, and I had the chase to myself for two miles, when I came up with Mohee, the Comanche chief of that party of Indians, and, after a short fight, in which ho wounded my horse, I killed him and took possession of his shield, quiver, lance and head- dress, which are now with the archives at Austin. In a few minutes Lieut. Tom Killiher came back to where I was, with an Indian squaw and a young child in her arms, and bitterly cursing his luck for having ran his favorite horse so far and hard, just to catch an old squaw. After looking at her for the second time I told Tom he had captured a white woman, which he refused to believe until I directed his attention to the color of her eyes. On the way back to where the thickest of the fight had occurred I came upon a small Comanche boy who had been picked up, first by Lieutenant Sublett and thrown down, and then by others, with like result, and, fearing that he might eventually be killed by some of the more reckless men, I took him up behind me and carried him back to where I went into camp and there named him "Pease," and he is the boy now about Waco. At the camp I called up a Mexican who had been raised by the Comanches, and through him soon gained sufficient information from the woman to convince me that she had been captured in childhood from some of the early Texas settlers, and her account of her capture by the Indians justified the opinion that she was one of the Parker children. On reaching the settlements information was conveyed to her uncle, and he came to see her, and soon, by old of a Mexican interpreter, convinced himself that she was Cynthia Ann Parker, his niece, who had been from her early childhood with the Indians. Two of her sons by her Indian husband were killed in the battle. This is a correct history of all the transactions relating to the several captives taken at different times by my command, and you can make what use you will of it. It seems hard that those to whom the credit is due should be defrauded out of it, since, indeed, they have never received any pay from the State of Texas for the long service rendered. I received some State warrants and have them yet, but presume they are worthless. • Very truly your friend, L. S. Ross. To JOHN ROBINSON, Robinsonville, Texas. [The Galveston Daily News, (Houston, TX) Thursday, June 03, 1875; Issue 125; col D] Eds. Hews—A note in the News from Col. Mackenzie, of May 19, inquires to the survivors of the Parker's Fort massacre. The Fort was located between the present towns of Groesbeck and Springfield, and was founded by the family whose name it bore, in 1835. After the battle of San Jacinto the citizens felt secure, and the gates were neglected On the 19th' of May, 1836, (thirty-nine years from the date of Col. Mackenzie's letter,) a body of 300 Comanche and Caddo Indians approached the place, pretending friendship. They inquired for a beef and a spring where they could camp. Benjamin Parker went outside the inclosure and pointed to a herd of cattle and stream of water. Without moving he was killed, and the savages entered the Fort. Out of the thirty-four persons then in the place but four were able to bear arms—John Parker, Sr. seventy-nine years old, his son, Silas M. Parker, and Samuel Frost and his son, Robert Frost. These were all killed and Mrs. John Parker wounded. Twenty- three of the party made their escape, and were six days without food before reaching the settlements, sixty miles down the Navasota river. The Indians took previously Mrs. Kellogg, who was kept four months. Mrs. Plummer (daughter of James Parker) and her son, James Pratt. Mrs. P. was more than a year a prisoner, and then sold to a Missouri trader and recovered by her uncle. But died in less than a year after reaching her Texas home. A short time after her death her son, James Pratt Plummer, was restored to his family. He too, and his father, are now dead. The Indians also took Cynthia Anne Parker, nine years old, and her brother John, six years old. John by some means escaped from the Indians and married a Mexican woman, and settled upon the Rio Grande, where he was living when last heard from. In 1861(?) Captain Ross, of Waco, had a fight with the Indians on the extreme frontier and captured a white woman with a little child. They were brought to Camp Cooper. Col. Isaac Parker, (who still lives in Parker county, upwards of eighty-two years of ago) anxious to recover his long-lost niece, visited Camp Cooper. The woman had forgotten her native tongue, and her uncle was about giving up in despair when he told the interpreter that the one he was hunting was named Cynthia. The countenance of the woman at once brightened. She placed her hand upon her breast and said Cynthia! Cynthia! She had left two children with her husband, who was a head man of his tribe. Since their return to civilized life she and her girl have both died. It seems from Col. McKenzie's note that one of the children she left is dead, and the other, Citra, is now at Fort Sill, anxious to learn the fate of his family. H. S. T. [The Galveston Daily News, (Houston, TX) Thursday, June 03, 1875; Issue 125; col D] A Clue to Cynthia Ann Parker. Corsicana, June 1, 1875. Eds. News— The information you wish in regard to Cynthia Ann Parker can be obtained of Mr. O'Quinn, at O'Quinn's saw-mill, in Anderson county, near Kickapoo. She and her little girl were there some two years ago. W, H. Hamil. [The Galveston Daily News, (Houston, TX) Friday, June 04, 1875; Issue 126; col E] ANDERSON COUNTY. The Palestine Advocate, copying General McKenzie's letter of inquiry says; " We clip the above from the Galveston News. In reply we would state that Mrs. Cynthia Ann Parker and her child died in this county, and were buried in the old Pilgrim Church cemetery, twelve miles from Palestine. An account of her life and death is on file in the Advocate office, subject to Inspection by relatives or others." [The Galveston Daily News, (Houston, TX) Friday, June 04, 1875; Issue 126; col D]
Cynthia Parker is buried besides her children in Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Cynthia Ann Parker Mother of Quanah Parker Chief of Comanche Indians 1827 - 1870