Anglin tidbit

This is primarily a Blackwell family blog, but I don't think it hurts to tell a story about my Anderson/Anglin side. My mom, Dorothy, was daughter of Tom Anderson and E.W. Anglin Anderson. That's right. My grandmother's name was E.W. That's because she was the youngest of 5 kids, and her father died shortly before she was born. For a long time they just called her "baby" but eventually decided they'd better give her a real name. They decided to name her after her father, but Eli Washington didn't seem exactly right for a little girl, so they just gave her his initials. She went through life known as "E".

So E's grandfather was among the pioneers who came with a group of other settlers led by Silas Parker to north central Texas. They built a fort there and called it Ft. Parker, which is close to the town of Groesbeck. Unfortunately, there was an Indian raid on the fort in 1836 and most of the inhabitants were massacred. A 9 year old girl, Cynthia Ann Parker (Silas's granddaughter) was captured and taken to live with the Comanches. Apparently Mr. Anglin and his family escaped. Cynthia Ann lived with the Indians for 24 years, married a chieftain, had 3 children, including a son who later became Chief Quanah Parker, but she was "rescued" by the Texas Rangers in 1860 and made to return to her white family. She never really recovered from being torn from her Indian family and never really assimilated back into the white world. The character, Stands With A Fist in the 1990 movie Dances with Wolves is based on Cynthia Ann Parker. Anyway, the cemetery near Groesbeck has a lot of Anglin family headstones and is really interesting to visit.