Historic Palestine

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A log structure, the first church built
by the Parker family and members of
the Pilgrim Predestinarian Regular
Baptist Church was completed in
December 1848. Pictured is the fourth
structure on the same site, erected in
1949 and reconstructed in 1997. The
Parker family graveyard adjoins the
site and includes historic memorials to
Daniel Parker and his brother James,
the founder of Fort Parker. Of the
location, Mary Kate Hunter wrote,
“Before the creation of the county,
[Fort Houston and the Pilgrim Church
settlement] were the most important
settlements in the territory.”
PHOTO BY ERIC DABNEY.
In the fall of 1838, General Thomas Jefferson
Rusk (1803-1857), an original signer of the Texas
Declaration of Independence in 1836 and later
president pro tem of the United States Senate in
1857, led a successful campaign against hostile
Indians and Mexicans camped near present-day
Frankston on the Kickapoo Battlefield, and the
removal of local Native American tribes in eastern
Texas was complete by 1841. Thus, the area that
would ultimately become Anderson County
began welcoming an increasing number of
pioneer settlers from around the country.
Mary Kate Hunter writes, “A stream of
immigration poured into East Texas, not the
rough and ready type one would expect in
frontier settlements, but from the southern
states came people of the highest type—
descendants of some of the proudest families in
8 ✦ H I S T O R I C P A L E S T I N E