Parker County, in north central Texas, is bounded on the north by Jack and Wise counties, on the east by Tarrant County, on the south by Hood and Johnson counties, and on the west by Palo Pinto County. The county was named for Isaac Parker.

No effort was made to colonize the area that is now Parker County under Spanish or Mexican rule, although parts of the county were part of an early land grant from Stephen F. Austin and Samuel May Williams. Kiowas and Comanches controlled the area in the late 1840s, when settlers of European descent began moving into the region on trails along the Brazos that had previously been established by the Indians.

Immigration to the area was encouraged during the early 1850s by an outbreak of malaria in Tarrant, Denton, and Collin counties, and by the establishment of the Butterfield Overland Mail route in 1855.

Under the leadership of Isaac Parker 224 settlers in the area signed a petition requesting the establishment of a new county, and in December 1855 the state legislature formed Parker County from Bosque and Navarro counties. Weatherford was designated as the county seat, and by 1858 the town had a new two-story brick courthouse surrounded by a handful of cabins and tents.

The county’s first newspaper, the Frontier News, began publication in 1858. Another paper, the Whiteman, moved to Weatherford in October 1860. This newspaper, published by John Robert Baylor and J. Hamner, was dedicated to the frontier and its defense against Indians, abolitionists, and horse thieves. It apparently ceased publication in December 1860.

In September 1861, after the beginning of the Civil War, many young men from Parker County enlisted in Parsons’ Brigade. Nine companies of eighty men each left the county to serve the Confederate cause during the war. Their absence contributed to population decline and disrupted the county economy and society. Since most of the men under forty-five had left to fight in the war, fears of Indian raids increased. In an effort to protect residents, a police force was appointed to patrol Weatherford, and many ranchers moved their families to more secure lodging in the county seat. By the end of the war many properties were in disrepair and much of the area’s livestock was scattered.

The last Indian raid in the county was recorded in 1874, and with the area stabilized the county’s agricultural economy grew steadily, encouraged by the construction of three railroads that built through the county during this period. The Texas and Pacific Railway extended its tracks through Weatherford in 1879, and in 1887 the town became the northern terminus of the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe. Another railroad, the Weatherford, Mineral Wells and Northwestern, completed its construction in the county by 1891. While linking the area to national markets, the railroads also attracted newcomers and led to the establishment of new farms and communities.

The economy continued to grow in the first years of the twentieth century, partly because cotton cultivation continued to expand rapidly. Between 1930 and 1940, during the Great Depression, the county’s unemployment rate rose sharply from 4 to 15.7 percent, and the area’s cotton production fell dramatically.

Parker County began to evolve in new directions during the 1960s. Interstate Highway 20 was built through the area, helping to encourage thousands of new residents to move in; many of them commuted to Fort Worth to work. Significant production of oil began in the county after 1966, and in 1973 almost 823,000 barrels of crude oil were produced there. Meanwhile the area’s longstanding dairy industry continued to prosper. By 1965 the county had 165 Grade A dairies, and ranked ninth in the state in the number of dairy cows.

The voters of Parker County supported Democratic candidates in almost every presidential election between 1856 and 1948. The only exception occurred in 1928, when the county went for Republican Herbert Hoover against the Catholic Democrat Al Smith. The county’s voting habits began to shift in the 1950s, when the voters swung to Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower in the elections of 1952 and 1960. County voters returned to the Democratic fold in the elections of 1960, 1964, and 1968, but by 1972, when Republican Richard Nixon won the county by a large margin, the county had begun to shift more decisively toward the Republicans.

(The information above is excerpted from the Handbook of Texas, an encyclopedia published by the Texas State Historical Association. The Handbook can be accessed on-line at http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/ online/index.new.html. Copies of the two-volume set may be obtained by contacting the history organization at 512-232-1513.)