Rachel Plummer

Rachel Parker Plummer (1818–1839) was the daughter of James W. Parker and the cousin of Quanah Parker, last free-roaming chief of the Comanches. An Anglo-Texan woman of Scots-Irish descent, she was kidnapped at the age of seventeen, along with her son, James Pratt Plummer, age two, and her cousins, by a Native American raiding party.

Rachel Plummer's 21 months among the Comanche as a prisoner became a sensation when she wrote a book about her captivity, Rachael Plummer's Narrative of Twenty One Months' Servitude as a Prisoner Among the Commanchee Indians, which was issued in Houston in 1838. This was the first narrative about a captive of Texas Indians published in the Republic of Texas, and it was a sensation not just there, but in the United States and even abroad. In 1844, after Rachel's death, her father published a revised edition of her book as an appendix to his Narrative of the Perilous Adventures, Miraculous Escapes and Sufferings of Rev. James W. Parker. Her book is considered an example of the captivity narrative used as propaganda to justify war against Native Americans, and an invaluable look at Comanche culture before environmental destruction, disease, starvation, and war forced them onto reservations.

Rachel Plummer was born in 1818 in Crawford County, Illinois¹, the second youngest living child of James W. Parker (1797-1864) and Martha Duty Parker. She had two living siblings, and three siblings who had died at an early age. Her family and allied families, led by her father James and uncle Silas, moved from Illinois to Texas along with other sons of Elder John Parker (1758-1836) and Sally White Parker, as part of the large Parker family. From that moment on, her life became anything but ordinary.

Rachel Parker spent most of her youth in Illinois. At age 14, considered a grown woman in that era, described by her father in his later book as a "red haired beauty of rare courage and intelligence," Rachel married Luther M. Plummer, and moved with the Parker family in 1830 to Conway County, Arkansas, which her father used as a staging ground for exploratory trips to Texas. In 1832 her father proposed to Stephen F. Austin that the Parkers be permitted to settle 50 families north of the Little Brazos River, in what was considered part of the Comancheria. One of the 50 families was that of Luther Plummer and his wife Rachel. Austin did not reply to this proposal. James Parker was the first of the Parkers to come to Texas, and his persistence led to his being given a league of land north of the site of present Groesbeck on April 1, 1835. Luther Plummer was also awarded a league of land by his father-in-law's stubborn entreaties to the Mexican Government.

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