John Parker (pioneer)

Elder John Parker (September 6, 1758 – May 19, 1836) was an American patriot, veteran of the American War of Independence, scout and minor diplomat for the American government, famous frontier Ranger, noted Indian fighter, Texan settler, and Predestinarian Baptist minister. He helped settle Texas before the Texas Revolution, and was immortalized in death when he was killed during the Fort Parker massacre in 1836, along with several members of his family, and others of the "Parker clan".

Parker was born in 1758 in Baltimore County, Maryland. His family moved to frontier Virginia while Parker was young and took part along with Daniel Boone and others in scouting the frontier into present day Kentucky and Tennessee. In 1777, the British and Indians launched a series of ruthless campaigns at exterminating the Americans from the frontier. Many of his extended family and family friends, men, women, and children were brutally massacred in the war. As a result, he left home to fight during the next two years in the American Revolution as survivors of the massacres held out in forts, bloc houses, and frontier settlements, foiling British led Indian death squads, and launching retaliatory raids on Indian communities in kind. Two years later, in November 1779, he married Sarah "Sallie" White before returning to war. After returning home in Virginia, the Parkers' first child, Daniel Parker, who was named in honor of friend and compatriot Daniel Boone, was born on April 6, 1781. Other children soon followed.

In the years following the end of the war, Indians on the frontier once again returned to murdering American frontier families and for a time pushed back the advances made at the end of the Revolution. Fearing for her family, his wife encouraged him to move elsewhere. Travelling down the old pioneer road following the end of about 1785, Parker moved his family to Georgia in search of safer opportunities for a better life.

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