PARKER, JESSE (ca. 1776-1849). Jesse Parker, soldier, pioneer, and early Texas colonist, was probably born in North Carolina around 1776. He moved around 1798 to Georgia and then in 1809 to St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana, where he volunteered for ninety days' service in the Thirteenth Louisiana Regiment in the War of 1812. In 1822 he moved his family to Texas and farmed a Spanish land grant near the site of Huntsville as a member of Vehlein's colony (see VEHLEIN, JOSEPH). He attended the Convention of 1832^qv at San Felipe de Austin as a representative of the Sabine District. He received a land grant of one league, approved on February 11, 1835. He was on the Old Three Hundred^qv original tax list of Washington County in 1837. On December 15, 1837, he was elected by the Republic of Texas^qv legislature to be associate land commissioner for Montgomery County, the last public office he held. His name is on a monument at Franklinton, Washington Parish, Louisiana, for the War of 1812, and on a monument at the courthouse in Hemphill, Texas, honoring prominent men of the area. A Texas Historical Commission^qv marker was dedicated on his grave on March 17, 1981. Jesse Parker married a woman named Sarah around 1798, and they had seven children. She died in the spring of 1828 in East Texas. There he married Elizabeth Barker in January 1829, and they also had seven children. The eldest son, Mathew (Matthew) Arnold, was in the Texas army during the Texas Revolution^qv and served as the first county judge of Sabine County. Wiley, the second son, served in the Texas army and was in Wier's detachments at Harrisburg during the battle of San Jacinto.^qv Parker died on May 27, 1849. His wife died on March 4, 1898. Both were buried in a family cemetery near their home. On October 20, 1979, their graves were moved to the lot of their youngest son, Samuel David, at Oakwood Cemetery, Huntsville, Texas.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: "Jesse Parker, Matthew Parker, and Elijah Isaacks," Texana 5 (Summer 1967). Texas House of Representatives, Biographical Directory of the Texan Conventions and Congresses, 1832-1845 (Austin: Book Exchange, 1941).

B. Elmer Spradley