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Austin Robertson

Dr. Parker. July 25/67

Dr. H. Parker, as he calls himself, is a colored individual, who has recently become a Conserative orator, perambulating the country with Lt.-Governor Jones, speaking at La Grange, Bastrop, and other points. It is understood that Dr. Parker is highly endorsed by Gov. Throckmorton, Judge Hancock, Col. Banks, and other Conservatives, in addition to the endorsement of the Lt.-Goovernor. The Gazette, the Bastrop Advertiser, and the Galveston News praise him and publish accounts of his flowing eloquence, and advise the negroes to follow his example and teachings.

We have had our eye on the conservative leader for some time, and now give the facts that we have collected in regard to him.

The Doctor has organized a society among the negroes which he assures them is to make them rich, happy and independent. He has collected from them large amounts of funds under various pretexts. He has purchased two large farms from Gen. "Goch" Hardeman and his brother, amounting to 1500 or 2000 acres of land. The purchase was part in money and part on time, and to secure the delayed payments deeds of trust have been executed for the lands, enabling the trustees to sell out the lands upon any failure of payments. The deeds are executed to Dr. Parker and a few others, not as trustees, but by fee simple deeds. The names of the great body of contributors are not mentioned in the deeds at all, and they have no rights whatever to the land. Dr. Parker has never paid of his own funds a single dollar. He bought some $800 worth of goods and merchants at Prairie Lea, to be paid in a short time out of cotton he professed to own, which amounts have not been paid at all. He has borrowed of several freedmen on the San Marcos river sums of money, to be shortly refunded, which have never been repaid. He has collected considerable amounts to build school-houses and churches, not one dollar of which has been so expended. There are several charges against him for adultery. For these acts the doctor has come to grief, and is now in durance vile.

To show the doctor's antecedents we publish the following letter:

MERIDIAN, MISS., July 7th, 1867.
Dear Sir: Yours of the 18th ult., is now before me, asking the character of one colored doctor who calls himself H. Parker. The fir t I heard of this man was in Mobile, in the fall of '65. He there formed an acquaintance with a blind woman, she having a husband at that time and well to do, her husband owning a house and lot and two drays. This opened a fair field for the doctor. it was not long before her husband was taken sick. This gave the Dr. an opportunity to try his hand, and she being blind and the Dr. attending to all of the business himself, or course her husband died in a few days; and she says she has every right to believe that he killed him, from the fact that while her husband was sick and her blind, he got all of her money. He told her he was going to take care of her, and she thinking that it was a good offer, she