John Richard Parker

Who was John Richard Parker?

John Richard Parker 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.