Known as Elder John Parker because whe was a preacher in the primitive baptist church and they called their preachers Elder instead of Reverend. Born September 6, 1758 per the American Revoluionary War application filed by John in Coles County, Illinois in 1833. It is not known with certainty who his parents were. As a young man he fought in the American Revolution. As a young man he moved to the Culpepper County Virginia area and married Sarah "Sally" White in November of 1779. John and Sally had 13 children together. After the 3 youngest children were born in Culpepper County the family moved to Elbert county, Georgia about 1785. they would have 9 children in Georgia before moving to the area of now Nashville Tennessee (know as Nashboro at that time) in 1803. Around 1817 the family moved again to the area of Crawford/Coles County Illinois. The family rose to prominence in Illinois the oldest son Daniel became a well known baptist preacher and was elected to the illinois State Senate. In 1833 John and his family looked at moving again this time to the new frontier of Texas. John's son, James Parker, led the intial group to Texas in 1833 where he secured land grants for the family from what was then still Mexico. The land was in what was known as the "Comancheria" near present day Groesebeck, Texas. Several of Johns son built a fort on the land in beginning in 1833. In the fall of 1835 John joined his sons in Texas at Ft Parker. Sally had died in Illinois in 1824 and John had remarried to the widow, Sarah Pinson Duty (who was the mother of 2 of his sons wifes). On May 19, 1836 in the early morning hours the Fort was attacked by a band of Comanche and Kiowa Indians. John was killed at the fort along with is sons Benjamin and Silas as well as Samuel and Robert Frost. Several women and children were captured including an 8 year old Cynthia Ann Parker, johns granddaughter whose father Silas was killed that day at the Fort. She would spend 25 years living with the Comanche, marry a Comanche chief named Peta Nacona and her oldest child, Quanah would eventually become the last chief of the Comanche Indians. He is not actualy buried under the oak tree in a mass grave approximately one and one half miles from the fort, this is simply a memorial marker to him and the others that died at Ft Parker. He was never properly buried in a marked grave as the survivors of Ft Parker were running for their lives hiding in the Navasota river bottoms afraid the Comanches were going to come find them and finish them off. Today the Descendants of Elder John Parker (he was a preacher in the primitive baptist church and they called their ministers Elder rather than Reverend hence his title as Elder John) meet annually at nearby Ft Parker State Parker for a family reunion. John has many descendants from his 13 child and over 100 grandchildren, including the Comanche blood descendants of Quanah Parker who honor his memory at the annual reunion

This Bio written by Scott Nicholson, great great great great great grandson of Elder John Parker who is the Family Historian/Genealogist of the annual Parker Family Reunion held at Ft Parker State Park near Groesbeck, Texas. for more information you may contact him through his find a grave account or on the facebook group fr the parker family called ParkerReunion

PS: please note that Phoebe Parker Hassell is Johns daughter, the Phoebe Parker Anglin listed here is not his daughter. I have tried to get the owner of the find a grave account for Phoebe Anglin to correct this mistake but they have refused and I cant remove the link showing her as his daughter only they can.

~
THE PARKER FAMILY
The patriarch of the Parker family in Texas was John Parker, who was born in 1758 in Baltimore, Maryland, and served in the American Revolution. He married Sarah White. Their first child, Daniel, was born in 1781 in Culpeper County, Virginia. The family then migrated to Elbert County, Georgia, whence the entire family migrated around 1803 via Tennessee to Cole County, Illinois, where Daniel's son, John N. was born in 1810. (Note: the correct name is Coles county, IL)
Both the Elder John and his eldest son were Baptist preachers and, when in March 1833 the entire family again decided to migrate, this time to Texas, they were faced with the dilemma of worshiping as Baptists in a province where Catholism was the only legally acceptable religion. The Elder Daniel Parker sought to circumvent the law by establishing a Baptist church in Illinois and bringing its members into Texas. Elder John Parker "was one of seven charter members of Pilgrim Church which was constituted in Crawford County, Illinois, July 26, 1933, as a Primitive (or Predestinarian) Baptist presbytery, for the express purpose of colonizing in Texas, then part of Mexico".
Since the patriarch John was now 75 years old, his son Daniel led the migration (consisting of 25 wagons of Parkers, kinsmen, and neighbors) from Illinois to Texas. The Pilgrim Predestinarian Church was built "on the north side of the bluff of the Harrison Fork on Bayou Blue" near present-day Elkhart, Anderson County, Texas, where the Elder Daniel and his family settled.
The Elder John Parker, together with his sons Silas, James W., and Benjamin, settled farther west on the Navasota River near present-day Groesbeck, Limestone County, Texas. It was here on 19 May 1836 that several hundred Indians, mostly Comanche and Kiowa, attacked the settlers of Fort Parker. The Elder John, his wife, and his sons Benjamin and Silas were among those slain. Two of the children of Silas Parker, 8-year-old Cynthia Ann and her brother John, were carried away by the Indians. By Comanche Chief Peta Nacona, Cynthia Ann (called Naduah by the Comanches) became the mother of three children, the eldest of whom was Quanah Parker who was to become the last great Comanche chief and lead the tribe in its final bitter struggle with his mother's people.
On 17 October 1835 Elder Parker had proposed the formation of the Texas Rangers. In 1860 Cynthia Ann together with Prairie Flower, one of her two daughters, was recaptured by the Texas Rangers under the leadership of Captain Sul Ross and returned to her surviving family members, but her years with the Comanches had left her more comfortable with her captors than with her family. Her brother John never returned to his family. One would not with to disregard the very real anguish and grief of their family; however, the deeper tragedy is that these two individuals, through no volition of their own, lived their lives on the fringes of two widely divergent cultures. They could never be entirely accepted into or trusted by either culture. Source: "Branches and Acorns" SWTGS Quarterly Vol. II, No. 1, p. 7-9 - September 1986 -- Extracted from the family records of Member Cynthia Buchanan, Daniel Webster Parker's granddaughter, SWTGS Member Cynthia Buchanan.]