Background
William Parks was born on May 23, 1699 in Shropshire, West Midlands, England.
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William Parks
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William Parks established the first presses of Ludlow, Hereford, and Reading in England, and began his unusual record as a pioneer of newspaper publication by establishing, at Ludlow and Reading respectively, the Ludlow Post-Man (1719) and the Reading Mercury (1723), the earliest journals to be published in those towns. After six years of printing activity in England, he appeared in Annapolis, Maryland, in March 1725/26, making proposals to the Assembly for the printing of its laws and journals. By an act of October 1727, he was appointed public printer, and from then until 1737 he continued to serve the province of Maryland in that capacity. In the year 1730 he enlarged his business by the establishment of a press in Williamsburg, the first printing office to be put in operation in Virginia since the inhibition in 1683 of the Jamestown press of William Nuthead. Appointed public printer of Virginia in 1732, he devoted his principal efforts thereafter to his Virginia business, and five years later gave up entirely his Maryland connection. In 1733 appeared from his Williamsburg press A Collection of All the Acts of Assembly Now in Force in the Colony of Virginia, a work of historical importance, which ranks also as one of the typographical monuments of colonial America. He maintained his position as public printer of Virginia until his death.
In 1736, the Virginia Gazette began publication under his able editorship. In addition to his government work and his newspapers, he gave attention to the publication of numerous works of historical or political character, and of many handbooks and compilations of daily utility. But the point of special interest is that, consistently, he made definite and successful effort to encourage local men of letters by the publication of works of purely literary intention. Through his publication in Maryland of poems by Richard Lewis and Ebenezer Cooke, and in Virginia of poems by John Markland, a "Gentleman of Virginia, " "Several Gentlemen of this Country, " and others, he nurtured a native literary product in those colonies at a time when most other American printers were devoting themselves to the production of works of the strictest utility.
In 1747 William Parks published William Stith's The History of the First Discovery and Settlement of Virginia. He published also in different years original medical works by Dr. John Tennent; political and economic tracts by various writers; the earliest American sporting book, Edward Blackwell's A Compleat System of Fencing (1734), and the first American cook book, E. Smith's The Compleat Housewife (1742).
The typographical quality of his work was superior to that of most of his American contemporaries, and his decorated bookbindings were unsurpassed by those of other binders of colonial America. About the year 1743, William Parks built, with the encouragement and active aid of Benjamin Franklin, the first paper-mill to be established south of Pennsylvania. He was one of the earliest printers to urge, in his "Advertisement, Concerning Advertisements", the efficacy of newspaper advertising, and in general his activities indicated the possession of qualities of business enterprise, public spirit, and literary taste unusual among the printers of his time. The printers of Virginia have placed a tablet to his memory in Williamsburg. William Park's death occurred April 1, 1750, in the course of a voyage to England.
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William Parks' wife was Eleanor. They had two children: William Parks Jr. and Eleanor, the wife of John Shelton.
