Finders Keepers, Volume 7, Number 2, June 2009 Page: 14
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Parker
Copied from HISTORY OF JOHNSON COUNTY AND SURROUNDING AREAS
By Viola Block - 1970 (Book no longer in print)New Hope School, Philadelphia Church, and
Nathan Post Office and store eventually all
combined to become Parker, a community that
became a town on the Trinity & Brazos Valley
Railroad between Grandview and Rio Vista on
the Cleburne-Hillsboro Highway.
New Hope School, one large room and one
small room, located in a pasture about two and a
quarter miles north of Parker, was picked up and
moved.
Philadelphia Church, at first all
denominational, later Methodist, was located on
a hill north of Parker across the road from the
Nathan store-post office. Mrs. Effie Tarter
Ricketts, former teacher and assistant county
superintendent, says her uncle, Nathan Thomas
McAlister, Jr., "Uncle Tom," established the
store and post office in 1876 and named it
Nathan in honor of his father who died in the
Civil War.
In 1878 Tom McAlister's maternal
grandparents, John L. and Fannie McKinley
Lovett, came to Nathan along with his mother
and stepfather. Mrs. Lovett was a cousin to
President William McKinley. John Lovett served
under General Lee during the Civil War.
The old red house on the north side of
Parker was built by "Uncle Tom" McAlister in
1876. The post office-general store was to the
north of the house. He sold out to A. N. West in
the 1880's and began to teach school. He taught
first at Antioch, later at Bono, Lone Willow and
Grange Hall. He received his education at Willie
Denton College at Joshua and an early
Cleburne college.
Miss Ola Holmes, who became the second
wife of Mark Kennard, was a teacher at the New
Hope School. Mrs. Ricketts said the two younger
members of her father's family were students
under Miss Ola. Mrs. Ricketts' father was born at
Towash, which is now under Lake Whitney. As a
girl his mother, Sarah Jane lived on a plantation
which had 100 slaves.
W. M. Tarter, from Bowling Green,
Kentucky, with two other men, a wagon and
team of mules stopped at Towash and camped
under a tree when on their way to Galveston. He
met Sarah Jane, began corresponding with her,
came back and married her. He joined what
today would be called the National Guard. When
the war began he joined the Confederate Armyand continued to serve in Galveston. In 1858
when Sarah Jane was about to have a baby, he
was unable to leave Galveston, but felt she
needed to be with her mother, so put the tiny
Sarah Jane (she usually weighed about 86
pounds) across the bay and started her on the
way back to Towash. She drove the covered
wagon and mule team, camped along the road
by herself, reached her parents' home at
Towash one morning and the next morning her
baby was born. Sarah Jane was born in 1842,
died in 1880; she had twelve children during her
short life. She is buried in the Evans Cemetery
north of Parker on Mustang Creek. This is
usually called the Faulkenbury Cemetery,
although Evans gave the land.
Mrs. Ricketts' said her parents, the J. W.
Tarters, were married by the Methodist
preacher, Badgett, Dec. 13, 1893 in the home of
her maternal grandparents, John L. and Fannie
McKinley Lovett. Mrs. Ricketts has the dishes in
which dessert was served for the wedding
dinner.
The Lovett's lived to the south of "Uncle
Tom" McAlister. The Orrs, Dr. George Orr and
Dr. Charley Orr, owned the farm to the north of
the Philadelphia Church, and Dr. Tolbert Yater's
parents lived on land where the church was
built. The Pipes, grandparents of Louis Pipes of
Cleburne, lived near Parker. Mrs. Ricketts said
"Uncle Jimmy" and "Aunt Susie" Holder lived
near New Hope. Their children, Ed Holder and
his sister, Mattie, who married one of the town
doctors, Dr. W. B. Pruitt, went to school at New
Hope. The Pruitts moved to Bono before Parker
became a town. The first doctor Mrs. Ricketts
remembers was Dr. Guy D. Compton who
boarded with her grandmother and grandfather
Tarter for a number of years. Dr. Compton was
nearly 100 when he died.
Mrs. Willie Nunn, who was born between
Parker and Covington, the daughter of the W. T.
Taylors, who moved to the community about 80
years ago, says that Dr. Bob Harris was a
country doctor for this community before Parker
was built. He was married to Widdie Watson, a
sister to Mrs. W. T. Taylor. He later operated the
Harris Hospital in Cleburne. Mrs. Nunn said Dr.
James Moore, also a country doctor, was the
first doctor for Parker. The second was Dr. Elvis,
from somewhere in the North, but he did not14-
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Johnson County Genealogical Society (Tex.). Finders Keepers, Volume 7, Number 2, June 2009, periodical, June 2009; Cleburne, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth613756/m1/14/: accessed May 30, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Johnson County Genealogical Society.