I. D. Parker Public Cemetery and Homestead

Isaac Duke Parker is the Parker this cemetery keeps. The Handbook of Texas says he enlisted on September 1, 1861, as a second lieutenant in the Sixth Texas Cavalry and came home to farm near Birdville. In 1880 his farm held more than seventy horses. He won a Texas House seat in 1888 by 721 votes, sat on five committees and saw none of his bills become law. James W. Swayne beat him in 1890. In January 1901 he gave this land, including a public section, and in 1902 was buried here with both wives and twelve children.

What the plaque says

I. D. Parker Public Cemetery and Homestead Isaac Duke Parker (1821-1902), son of early Texas politician Isaac Parker (1793-1883), settled near this site in 1853 with his family. During the Civil War I.D. Parker served as Tarrant County Commissioner before enlisting in the Confederate army. He assumed ownership and operation of the Parker Homestead and Cemetery about 1867. Shortly before his death, Parker donated this Cemetery property and designated the eastern half, which contains more than 30 graves, as a public burial ground. The cemetery and homestead site symbolize the life of this prominent pioneer family. (1983)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tarrant County Courthouse — 8.3 mi
  A pink-granite courthouse of 1895 on the bluff where the Army set up Fort Worth in 1849, in a county named for the man who led the 1841 attack on the Native villages of Village Creek.
• Fort Worth Stockyards — 8.4 mi
  The brick-street cattle market where Armour and Swift built packing plants in 1902, now a National Register district with a Coliseum, a museum and a longhorn drive twice a day.
• Kimbell Art Museum — 10 mi
  Louis Kahn's cycloid-vaulted museum of 1972, built from Kay Kimbell's bequest and joined in 2013 by Renzo Piano's pavilion for the exhibitions the Kahn galleries could not hold.
• National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame — 11 mi
  A hall of fame begun in Hereford in 1975 to honor rodeo women, widened in 1977 to Western heritage, and housed in Fort Worth's Cultural District since 2002.

More markers nearby

• William Letchworth Hurst — 1.3 mi
• Florence School — 2.9 mi
• Birdville Church of Christ — 2.9 mi
• Pioneer Birdville Schools — 2.9 mi