3/22/07
Who was Martin Parmer
By Darla Bracken fridarla19@yahoo.com
There it is…the third signature under Sam Houston’s…the signature of Martin Parmer, one of the signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence on March 2, 1836 at Washington-on-the-Brazos. Parmer had served on the committee to draft the Declaration of Independence…the same Martin Parmer for whom our county was named when Parmer County was first created August 21, 1876…one hundred and thirty years ago.
He was not a native Texan, but rather a Virginian by birth and rearing having been born there on June 4, 1778 as Martin Palmer (frontier usage changed the spelling and pronunciation of the last name). By the time he was twenty, he had ventured into Kentucky and then on to Tennessee where he married his first wife Sarah Hardwick with whom he would have ten children. She died in 1826. (He would remarry 3 more times being widowed twice more and would father 7 more children). While in Dickinson County Tennessee, he was superintendent of the Montgomery Bell Iron Works. This company made, among other things, cannonballs, which were used by Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans. He, himself, being the son of an American Revolutionary War Veteran, Martin entered the service in the War of 1812 where he attained the rank of colonel.
Always in search of a new frontier to tame, he moved to Missouri in 1816 at the age of 38. Here he became interested in politics when he served as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of Missouri in 1821. He later served as both a state representative and as a state senator for the state of Missouri. By the time he came to Texas in 1826, he had quite a reputation for being an Indian fighter and evidently quite a talker always attracting an audience with his war stories and Indian tales. His own personal battle cry was that he was a ‘ring-tailed panther from Missouri’ i.e. quite a scrapper and never one to run from a fight—especially one he had started. So after coming to Texas it wasn’t long before he found the fighting. Colonel Martin Parmer fought with the colonists against the Mexican authorities in the Fredonian Rebellion in March 1827 overthrowing Samuel Norris, the alcade or mayor, and his attorney Jose Antonio Sepulveda and placing Nacogdoches under martial law. The Rebellion failed, however; and he and his cohorts crossed the Sabine River into exile.
But he was back in Texas for the Consultation of 1835 representing the city of Tenaha and then serving as a delegate from San Augustine to the Constitutional Convention at Washington-on-the-Brazos in March 1836. It was here on March 2, 1836 (Texas Independence Day) that 58-year-old Martin Parmer, the oldest delegate present and the self-proclaimed ‘ring-tailed panther from Missouri’ became one of the 59 men to sign this important document. He served on the committee to draft the declaration. In a letter to his wife dated March 6, 1836 he states: “Texas has been declared free, but unless we have a general turnout and every many lay a helping hand, too, we are lost. Santa Anna and his vassals are now on our borders, and the declaration of our freedom, unless it is sealed with blood, is of no force.” Signed: Martin Palmer. He also quotes from Lt. Colonel W. Barret Travis’ Feb. 24th communiqué from the Alamo that “he must have help.”
His son, Isom Parmer, served in the Texas army, the only one of his sons to do so, and was Sergeant at arms for the Convention. He had purchased a fine horse for the sum of $400 Mexican dollars and when Sam Houston was appointed Commander-in-chief of the Texas forces and was in dire need for a new mount, Isom sold Houston the horse. It was this same horse that was later shot out from under Houston at the Battle of San Jacinto.
In 1839 Parmer was appointed Chief Justice of Jasper County. He died there March 2, 1850 at age 72. As Texas Ranger Captain, Creed Taylor told in Tall Men and Long Rifles: “The Panther, as he was called, was a Virginian, and a typical backwoodsman, who had spent most of his life along the frontiers of Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas and Texas and had much notoriety throughout the southwest as a fighter and a hunter. Palmer was a man of more than ordinary parts, of most extraordinary strength of mind and body and brave as a lion. He was of large stature and bronzed of feature, always dressed in buckskin hunting shirt and leather trousers, with a panther skin cap, wore his hair long and platted in Indian Style, and was indeed a unique figure. I first saw the ‘Panther’ at our home on Taylor’s Bayou and he impressed me as a most extraordinary character. On this occasion the ‘Panther’ was well mounted and armed, and in high glee, eager for a brush with the enemy…” Martin Parmer was buried in Jasper County on the A.C. Parmer survey where a sandstone headstone marked the grave until it became illegible. In 1936 during the Texas Centennial, his remains were removed from Jasper County and re-interred in the State Cemetery in Austin where a granite marker preserves and honors his memory as one of the signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence.