02-05-2025
Parkers from Comanche, white lines of county namesake meet for barbecue and fellowship
The two sides of Parker County's namesake family recently got together for barbecue and brotherhood in Weatherford.
More than 30 members of Cynthia Ann Parker's bloodline, white and Native American, shook hands at Baker's Ribs and heard keynotes from their Comanche matriarch and white patriarch.
Parker, the 9-year-old settler taken in a Comanche raid on Fort Parker in East Texas, innocently stepped into Texas legend 189 years ago come May 19.
'She had a whole life, and that life changed in the blink of an eye,' her great-great-great-granddaughter, Tina Devlin Emhoolah, said as she started wiping tears that continued throughout her talk. 'Everything she knew — her life was snatched from her that day.'
Emhoolah led direct descendants to the meetup in Weatherford from Ft. Sill, Oklahoma and other parts of the former Indian territory.
Her distant cousin, Trevor Wardlaw, and the white relatives descend from Parkers who survived the raid on Fort Parker north of Groesbeck.
Wardlaw told the Weatherford Democrat those survivors included Cynthia Ann's father, Silas, who with the rest migrated to Elkhart and Palestine in Anderson County.
'So, here we are in Parker County,' he greeted everyone. 'For now, 1836 is where the story begins for the Parkers, but that's not true.'
Wardlaw explained the Parkers left their mark in Virginia, Georgia and Illinois before Elder John Parker and his Primitive Baptist congregation arrived in time to make history. 'Here comes the Texas Revolution.'
More significantly, for the Parkers, here came the Comanche.
Emhoolah's address to the group focused on the 9-year-old girl at the center of the story.
Others were kidnapped in the raid, some were rescued.
'But for her, no one came,' Emhoolah said. 'I can't tell you a love story. Her life has been written into a love story, it's been romanticized. Cynthia Ann was a daughter of Silas (Parker), the son of Elder John. I know that I came to be a Comanche because of a little girl that was taken as a child.
'She had the will to live, she had the will to persevere. She had the will to be a survivor.'
Parker had two sons and a daughter with the man she married, her captor Chief Peta Nocona. Of sons Pecos and Quanah and daughter Prairie Flower, Quanah grew to be a historical figure in his own right.
He also clearly learned things his mother passed to him from her childhood memory of life before the raid.
'The Parker family came, as many families, across the water to this country with freedom of religion, coming in the name of God,' Emhoolah said. 'She would've known these things up to the age of 9.'
Quanah, she said, displayed charisma as he grew to be a fierce Comanche leader. He also could read change in the wind.
'He was a leader who was able to adjust,' Emhoolah said. 'So, there were some things that she carried with her that she taught to him.'
In his address to the group, Wardlaw said Cynthia Ann didn't know what to think when she was recovered by Texas Rangers in 1860 at Mule Creek, midway between Fort Worth and Amarillo.
'She just didn't know what was going on,' he said. 'She thought, would she be killed?'
Wardlaw also highlighted Quanah's closeness to his mother, whom he lost after she'd been returned to the white world.
'Quanah lived a very different life,' he said. 'His mom and sister had been taken away. His father eventually passed away. He was orphaned and had to grow up pretty fast. But he survived — make no doubt about it, Quanah was a warrior.'
Wardlaw quoted historian Billy Dixon's account of the 1874 Second Battle of Adobe Walls:
''There was never a more splendidly barbaric sight. Hundreds of mounted warriors in splendid colors on the bodies of the horses.''
By 1875, Wardlaw said, 'Quanah was the holdout,' the last Comanche to lay down arms.
'He saw the progression and where he needed to take his people,' he said. 'He was a huge proponent of education.'
He echoed Emhoolah's assessment of Quanah's resilience.
'In 1905, he rode with Teddy Roosevelt in his inauguration parade,' Wardlaw said. 'That's a change, baby.'
Quanah remained devoted to his mother after she was taken from him.
'There's not much written about Quanah searching for his father,' Wardlaw said. 'But he never stopped searching for his mother.'
Quanah died in 1901 and is buried atop Chiefs Knoll, the highest point in the Fort Sill Post Cemetery in Fort Sill, Oklahoma.
He lays next to Cynthia Ann.
Wardlaw said a photo of the man shows him standing next to pictures of his mother, his sister and Jesus, a pistol in its belt draped over a bedpost.
'That picture captures everything that we know about the Parker family,' he said.
Wardlaw and Emhoolah closed with a public invitation to join the clans at their Oct. 11 family reunion at Fort Parker.
'Everybody's welcome,' Wardlaw said.
