John Richard Parker

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.<ref name=...
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