The Parker family, which was the first family to settle in and create Coles County and Charleston, will be featured this weekend as part of the Booth Library exhibit.

The main focus of the exhibit is Cynthia Ann Parker, who was kidnapped from her family at 9 years old in the 1800s when the family moved to Texas after years of settling into Coles County.

Beth Heldebrandt, the public relations director of Booth library, said the information about the Parkers was brought to library’s attention from a rediscovered movie.

The movie, called “Daughter of Dawn,” was discovered by community member, Caroline Stevens, who has local history experience and knew about Quanah and Cynthia Ann Parker.

“‘Daughter of Dawn’ is the whole reason why we are doing this exhibit and series,” Heldebrandt said. “This movie is the lost movie that was discovered about two years ago by Stevens, who called me because she knew I worked at the library and told me to purchase it for the library so people can check it out.”

Stevens told her that it was about the Parker family and the whole story of how Cynthia Ann was kidnapped.

“She really inspired this whole exhibit and program series,” Heldebrandt said.

The opening program will start at 7 p.m. Friday in the Buzzard Hall Auditorium, with a discussion to follow by Audrey Kalivoda, who is the person who created the film.

More programs will be on Saturday morning and afternoon, creating a two-day symposium.

“Friday afternoon both of the programs are related to each other, and they are both related to the Parker cemetery which is a cemetery out in the middle of a farmers field that was over grown with weeds,” she said.

Some of the Parker family members from Missouri and Indiana are going to talk about what they did to clean up the cemetery once it was rediscovered in a panel at 2 p.m. Friday in the West Reading Room in the library.

“There are not just Parkers buried there but others as well, including some people who are related to the series,” she said.

Steven DiNaso, a professor in the geology-geography department, will be talking about how he and his students have been working at the cemetery at a panel at 3 p.m. Friday in the West Reading Room.

“They have all this technology and have been taking the equipment to the cemetery and helping them map it out and trying to figure out where the gravesites are,” Heldebrandt said.

Saturday morning will begin with a program about Quanah and his involvement with the Battle of Adobe Walls.  It will be at 10 a.m. in the West Reading Room in the library, followed by the showing of two films, “Smoke Signals” and “Dance with Wolves,” which will be a 11 a.m. in the West Reading Room.

The “Daughter at Dawn” movie will be shown at 1 p.m. in the Buzzard Hall Auditorium, and a showing of the movie “The Searchers,” which is a John Wayne movie that is based off the Cynthia Ann Parker story, will be shown at 3:30 p.m. in the Buzzard Hall Auditorium.

Heldebrandt said every semester the library chooses a topic and the events are scattered throughout the time length of the exhibit, but this semester they will be conducting it a bit differently.

“This time we decided to do a whole bunch of them at once over two days, Friday and Saturday, because there are a lot of Parker’s who still live here,” she said. “And also a lot of Parker’s who we are told, are coming from out of state. We wanted them to be able to attend a lot of the events.”

Stephanie White can be reached at 581-2812 or at [email protected].