Hardeman County
Quanah, Hardeman County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Created February 1, 1858 Recreated August 21, 1876 Organized December 30, 1884 Named in honor of Bailey Hardeman, 1785-1836, signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, and Thomas Jones Hardeman, 1788-1854 member of the Texas Congress and Legislature. County seat, Margarette, 1884-1890 Quanah, since, in honor of Quanah Parker, a Comanche chief
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Created in 1858 and finally organized in 1884, Hardeman County honors two brothers of the Texas independence generation: Bailey Hardeman, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, and Thomas Jones Hardeman, a member of the Texas Congress and Legislature. The county seat moved from Margarette to Quanah, a town named for the Comanche chief Quanah Parker. That pairing captures the frontier's transition, as land once dominated by the Comanche opened to Anglo settlement.
Why it matters
The county's names bind together the founders of the Texas Republic and the last great Comanche chief, marking the meeting point of Anglo expansion and Native power on the southern plains.
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Related people
- · Bailey Hardeman
- · Thomas Jones Hardeman
- · Quanah Parker
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Medicine Mound Community
Medicine Mound, TX
The area's earliest inhabitants were Comanche and Kiowa people who camped around four dolomite hills—the Medicine Mounds—prized for their healing properties. After the land was deeded to a railway in 1854 and Anglo settlers arrived in the 1870s, a small village grew, then relocated 2.5 miles north in 1908 when the Kansas City, Mexico and Orient Railway came through. At its peak Medicine Mound held 22 businesses and 500 people, but the Depression and a 1933 fire that burned the whole town drove its decline, and the last business closed in 1966.
Pease River Battlefield
Margaret, TX
On this ground in December 1860, Texas Rangers under Captain L. S. Ross overtook a Comanche encampment and recaptured Cynthia Ann Parker, who had been taken as a child during a raid in 1836 and raised among the Comanche for twenty-four years. Torn from the family she had made—including her son, the future chief Quanah Parker—her recapture became one of the most famous and tragic episodes of the Texas frontier. The state marked the battlefield in 1936.
Pease River Battlefield
Crowell, TX
At the Battle of Pease River in 1860, Texas Rangers under Captain L. S. Ross attacked a Comanche encampment and took a woman they recognized as Cynthia Ann Parker, seized as a nine-year-old in the 1836 raid on Fort Parker. By then she had lived a quarter-century among the Comanche as Naduah, wife of Chief Peta Nocona and mother of the future leader Quanah Parker. Returned to her Anglo relatives with her infant daughter, she never adjusted, tried repeatedly to escape, and died in 1864.
Red River Valley Museum
Vernon, TX
The Red River Valley Museum holds one of Texas' notable regional collections of Indian artifacts, tracing the long human presence along the Red River. Before the great Chisholm Trail cattle herds crossed at nearby Doan's Crossing, this was the country of the Comanche, Kiowa, and Wichita peoples. Mr. and Mrs. J. Henry Ray of Vernon spent thirty years assembling the collection, which they donated to Wilbarger County in 1963.