Early Life
Cynthia Ann Parker was born to Silas M. Parker and Lucy Parker in Crawford County, Illinois. There is considerable dispute about her age; according to the 1870 census of Anderson County, Texas, she would have been born between June 2, 1824, and May 31, 1825. When she was nine years old, her paternal grandfather John Parker was recruited to settle his family in Texas; he was to establish a fortified settlement against Comanche raids which had been devastating to the colonization of Texas and northern Mexico for generations. Upon arriving in Texas, the Parker family moved to north-central Texas and built a log fort—which soon became known as Fort Parker—on the headwaters of the Navasota River in what is now Limestone County. Cynthia's brother James was killed on the way from Illinois to Texas when the wagon lost a wheel and he was struck through the chest with a piece of splintered wood.
Read more about this topic: Cynthia Ann Parker
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“The great passion in a man’s life may not be for women or men or wealth or toys or fame, or even for his children, but for his masculinity, and at any point in his life he may be tempted to throw over the things for which he regularly lays down his life for the sake of that masculinity. He may keep this passion secret from women, and he may even deny it to himself, but the other boys know it about themselves and the wiser ones know it about the rest of us as well.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)