The elder John Parker was a native of Virginia, resided for a time in Elbert county, Georgia, but chiefly reared his family in Bedford county, Tennessee, whence in 1818 he removed to Illinois.
The family, with perhaps one or two exceptions, belonged to one branch of the primitive Baptist church, commonly designated as “two seed,” or “hard shell” Baptists.
In the spring of 1834 the colonist erected Parker’s Fort,[1] a kind of wooden barricade, or wall around their cabins, which served as a means of better protecting themselves against the numerous predatory bands of Indians into that, then, sparsely settled section.
[1] The reader will understand by this term, not only a place of defense, but the residence of a small number of families belonging to the same neighborhood. As the Indian mode of warfare was an indiscriminate slaughter of all ages, and both sexes, it was as requisite to provide for the safety of the women and children as for that of the men.
Dodridge’s faithful pen picture of early pioneer forts, will perhaps give the reader a glimps of old Fort Parker in the dark and bloody period of its existence. He says:
“The fort consisted of cabins, blockhouses, and stockades. A range of cabins commonly formed on one side at least of the fort. Divisions, or portions of logs, separated the cabins from each other. The walls on the outside were ten or twelve feet high, the slope of the roof being turned wholly inward. A very few of these cabins had puncheon floors, the greater part were earthen. The blockhouses were built at the angles of the fort. They projected about two feet beyond the outer walls of the cabins and stockades. Their upper stories were about eighteen inches every way larger in dimension than the under one, leaving an opening at the commencement of the second to prevent the enemy from making a lodgment under their walls. In some forts, instead of blockhouses the angles of the fort were furnished with bastions. A large folding gate, made of thick slabs, nearest the spring, closed the fort. The stockades, bastions, cabins, and blockhouse walls, were furnished with port-holes at proper heights and distances. The whole of the outside was completely bullet-proof.
It may be truly said that “necessity is the mother of invention”; for the whole of this work was made without the aid of a single nail or spike of iron; and for this reason such things were not to be had. In some places, less exposed, a single blockhouse, with a cabin or two, constituted the whole fort. Such places of refuge may appear very trifling to those who have been in the habit of seeing the formidable military garrisons of Europe and America, but they answered the purpose, as the Indians had no artillery. They seldom attacked, and scarcely ever took one of them.”
As early as 1829 the “Prairie Indians” had declared war against the settlers, and were now actively hostile, constantly committing depredations in different localities.
Parker’s colony at this time consisted of only some eight or nine families, viz: Elder John Parker, patriarch of the family, and his wife; his son James W. Parker, wife, four single children and his daughter, Mrs. Rachel Plummer, her husband, L. M. T. Plummer, and infant son, fifteen months old; Mrs. Sarah Nixon, another daughter, and her husband L. D. Nixon; Silas M. Parker (another son of Elder John), his wife and four children; Benjamin F. Parker, an unmarried son of the Elder[2]; Mrs. Nixon, sr., mother of Mrs. James W. Parker; Mrs. Elizabeth Kellogg, daughter of Mrs. Nixon; Mrs. —— Duty; Samuel M. Frost, wife and two children; G. E. Dwight, wife and two children; in all thirty-four persons.
[2] Elder Daniel Parker, a man of strong mental powers, a son of Elder John, does not figure in these events. He signed the Declaration of Independence in 1836, and preached to his people till his death in Anderson county in 1845. Ex-Representative Ben. F. Parker, is his son and successor in preaching at the same place. Isaac Parker, above mentioned, another son, long represented Houston and Anderson counties in Senate and House, and in 1855 represented Tarrant county. He died in Parker county, not long since, not far from 88 years of age. Isaac D. Parker of Tarrant is his son.