DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to honor every word. Now, some stories travel in a straight line. And some stories travel in a circle so wide it takes twenty-four years to close.
This one — this one is the second kind. It starts on May 19th, 1836, way over in what is now Limestone County, Texas. That's the day Cynthia Ann Parker was captured by Comanche Indians.
A child, taken. And the world she'd known — gone, just like that. Twenty-four years.
Let that sit a moment. That's how long before the next chapter of this story gets written. December 18th, 1860.
Out here on the Pease River — right where you're rolling past now, in Foard County — Texas Rangers rode under Captain L. S. Ross.
And on that cold December day, Cynthia Ann Parker was recaptured here on this stretch of ground. Two dates. Two moments of capture — one taken, one retaken — bookending nearly a quarter century of a life lived between worlds.
The State of Texas saw fit to mark this ground in 1936, because some places carry weight that the wind alone can't hold. The Pease River remembers. It doesn't say much.
But it remembers.
What the marker says
After being captured by Comanche Indians on May 19, 1836, in what is now Limestone County Cynthia Ann Parker was recaptured here by Texas Rangers under Captain L.S. Ross on December 18, 1860. Erected by the State of Texas 1936