A large group under the family patriarch, Elder John Parker, settled near the headwaters of the Navasota River in present-day Limestone County.
On May 19, 1836, a large force of Comanche and allied warriors attacked the fort, and in what became known as the Fort Parker Massacre killed five men and captured two women and three children: Parker, his elder sister Cynthia Ann, Rachel Plummer and her son James Pratt Plummer as well as Elizabeth Duty Kellogg.
[1] The Comanche's population had increased in large part by adopting captured women and children into the tribe, the former as child-bearing slaves and the latter as tribal members.
[2] Grown men captured alive were generally killed, while females over puberty could expect gang rape and slavery.
[4] The Comanche were returning from the raid with captives, horses, and other plunder, but they stopped briefly when Parker became too ill to ride, somewhere just north of the Rio Grande in West Texas.
[4] The Comanche were terrified that they, too, would catch this dreaded killer, which had killed over half the tribe during the epidemic years, and they left Parker to ride out the illness, leaving a girl they had captured on the raid to take care of him.