Historic Palestine

By the time of their departure in the early fall
of that same year, historians record that the newly
established church group may have included as
many as twenty-five ox-drawn wagons on their
return to settle in Texas. Notably, the large
caravan was joined by Silas and Lucy Parker,
whose daughter Cynthia Ann (c. 1825-c. 1871),
later gave birth to the great Comanche warrior
and chief, Quanah Parker (c. 1845-1911).
The church and its members entered Texas
and held their first church meeting in Stephen F.
Austin’s Colony on January 20, 1834, under the
direction of Elder Daniel Parker. They
ultimately settled along San Pedro Creek in
Houston County, established what historians
consider one of the oldest forts in the state,
Brown’s Fort, and built their first church.
In 1834 Reverend Parker’s brother, John,
moved with his wife, Sara, and their three sons
further west to the headwaters of the Navasota
River and established Fort Parker at Groesbeck
in Limestone County. The fort, today a state
historic site, would become well-known for a
deadly raid by Native American warriors on the
John Parker family, including Cynthia Parker,
and other settlers at the fort in 1836. Historian
Bob Bowman wrote that the legendary story
remains a “slice of history almost as riveting as
the Alamo” and notes that it took survivors of
the massacre six days to make the 60-mile
journey to safety behind the walls of the newly
constructed Fort Houston in Anderson County.
On July 4, 1835, Reverend Daniel Parker
established a new home and branch of his original
church group and held the first church service
near present-day Elkhart, on a site that remains
today as Pilgrim Church—considered the oldest
continuous Protestant church in the state.
Settlers including Williston Ewing and Joseph
Jordan, himself a member of the Parker
immigration to Texas and recorded as a “new
member” of the Parker’s church at Claiborne
Parish, Louisiana, in October 1833, developed
land a few miles west of present-day Palestine in
the early summer of 1835. W. L. McDonald joined
Jordan in surveying a townsite at the location.
A small community formed in the area, which
historian Stephen Moore describes in Taming Texas
as fertile land with “a magnificent spring where
tradition has it that the water gushed forth from the
earth,” and the town of Houston was established.
At the same time, the battle for Texas
independence was ablaze across the land. On
November 2, 1835, Texas seceded from Mexico
and Dictator Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna
ordered a military offensive across the state in
hopes of quashing the rebellion. However, with
cries of “Remember the Alamo!” and “Remember
Goliad!” still ringing across the land, Texans
rallied in their legendary battle for independence
at the decisive, eighteen-minute battle of San
Jacinto led by General Sam Houston and the
Republic of Texas was born in 1836.
Small settlements could be found in what is
now Anderson County by the time Fort Houston
was ordered to be built by General Sam Houston
(1793-1863), who served as commander-in-chief
of the Texas armies, was a two-term president of
the Republic of Texas and later a United States
Senator. The fort was built on the public square of
the growing community of Houston, a town that
would flourish and endure for a time after the fort
ceased to exist, to serve as a protective barrier
against local Native American tribes. It consisted
of a stockade built by Texas Rangers and a twentyfive-foot-square
blockhouse built of heavy logs. It
was used in the defense of a massive area of land
along the frontier from 1836 to 1839, and was
under the command of General Nathaniel, who
oversaw the building of the fort.
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The heartbreaking story of the life of
Cynthia Ann Parker, which first began
on a raid at her family’s settlement at
Fort Parker, is commemorated along an
outdoor wall of history near downtown
Palestine that includes the stories of
several of the area’s landmark events
and people. The story of Parker and
her family may have also inspired one
of John Wayne’s most dramatic movies,
The Searchers, in 1956 and was the
subject of a 2006 biography, Return, by
former mayor of Palestine and
historian Jack Selden.
PHOTO BY ERIC DABNEY.
C h a p t e r I ✦ 7