Thomas S. Parker
Corpus Christi, Nueces County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Born in Philadelphia in 1817, Thomas S. Parker came to Texas at the age of twenty. In 1839 he and his parents William W. and Hannah Parker were awarded large land grants in the vicinity of present-day Corpus Christi; they used the land to raise cattle. About 1845 Parker joined forces with his friend Henry L. Kinney, who had established a trading post in this vicinity and also commanded a Texas Ranger unit. When General Zachary Taylor's U.S. Army set up came near the trading post in August 1845, Kinney was named the army's quartermaster, and Thomas Parker was awarded the contract to supply beef for the soldiers. It was from this army post that the town of Corpus Christi grew. As an established resident of the area, "Col. Tom" Parker, as he was known, was appointed the first Nueces County Sheriff after Texas was admitted to the Union in 1845. He later served as a Texas Ranger and as a soldier in the Confederate army. After the end of the Civil War, Parker returned to Corpus Christi, where he became City Marshal in 1873 and died in 1886. Thomas Parker's contributions in commercial activity and law enforcement were vital to the early growth of Corpus Christi. He and his wife Rachel are buried at this site. (1983)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Philadelphia-born Thomas S. Parker came to Texas at twenty, and in 1839 he and his parents received large land grants near present-day Corpus Christi, where they raised cattle. He allied with trader Henry L. Kinney, and when Zachary Taylor's army camped near Kinney's post in 1845 — the staging ground for the war with Mexico — Parker won the contract to supply the soldiers' beef. "Col. Tom" went on to become the first sheriff of Nueces County, later a Texas Ranger and Confederate soldier, and finally Corpus Christi's city marshal, shaping the young city's commerce and law until his death in 1886.
Why it matters
Parker's career — cattleman, army supplier, sheriff, and Ranger — traces the very founding of Corpus Christi, born from a frontier trading post and an army encampment on the eve of the Mexican-American War.
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Related people
- · Thomas S. Parker
- · Henry L. Kinney
- · Zachary Taylor
- · Rachel Parker
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Matthew Nolan
Corpus Christi, TX
Orphaned and brought to Corpus Christi as a boy in 1845, Matthew Nolan served as a bugler through the Mexican-American War, rode with the Texas Rangers under 'Rip' Ford, and became Nueces County sheriff in 1858. He fought for the Confederacy along the Texas coast, returned to the sheriff's office as a major, and was murdered in 1864; he lies in Old Bayview Cemetery beside the brother who died as his deputy.
George Owens
Corpus Christi, TX
Born into slavery in Kentucky in 1843, George Owens enlisted in the Union Army in 1864 and served with the 116th United States Colored Infantry through the Appomattox Campaign that ended the Civil War. He then joined the newly formed 9th Cavalry—one of the regiments Plains nations called Buffalo Soldiers—patrolling and guarding the west Texas frontier before settling in Corpus Christi, where he died in 1879.
Nueces County
Corpus Christi, TX
Nueces County takes its name from the 'River of Nuts' that forms its northern border, a country touched early by Spanish explorers and marked by the frontier post of Lipantitlan. The area passed into Anglo-American hands during the Texas Revolution, and in 1845 U.S. Army forces camped here on their way to the fighting of the Mexican-American War. The county itself was created in 1846 and organized the next year with Corpus Christi as its seat.
Henry Lawrence Kinney
Corpus Christi, TX
Pennsylvania-born Henry Lawrence Kinney arrived on Corpus Christi Bay in 1838 and, a year later, opened a trading post on the bluff that would grow into a city. Much of his early trade was contraband run to Mexican Federalists, but his fortunes soared when General Zachary Taylor chose his outpost to stage the U.S. Army before the Mexican-American War. Kinney served as quartermaster, sold town lots to Taylor's soldiers, sat in the legislature for years, and chased grand schemes—a failed 1851 fair, a doomed Nicaragua venture—before dying in Matamoros in an unmarked grave.