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William Parks (before 1695? – 1 April 1750) was a printer and newspaper publisher in England and Colonial America best known for printing the first newspapers in Maryland (The Maryland Gazette) and Virginia (The Virginia Gazette), as well as being the first printer in Virginia.

Early years in Ludlow & Worcester

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It is unclear exactly when and where Parks was born, but circumstantial evidence suggests it was before 1695[note 1] and in the vicinity of Ludlow, Shropshire.[note 2]

The oldest known surviving documentary evidence of William Parks is the indenture binding him as an apprentice to Worcester printer Stephen Bryan on 25 August 1710.[1] Bryan, ten years older than his apprentice, had only begun publishing Worcester’s first newspaper, the Worcester Post-Man, on 9 June of the previous year.[2][3]

By 1719 Parks had set up a press of his own in Ludlow and began to practice the craft and business he had learned from Stephen Bryan by publishing the first issue of his own newspaper, The Ludlow Post-Man, on 9 October 1719,[4][5]making it the second newspaper to be published in Shropshire.[note 3] In the 19th century, historian Thomas Wright praised the Post-Man and Parks' skills as printer and editor by writing, “this paper was far better got up materially, and better edited, than the ordinary newspapers for half a century afterwards” and noted that the paper was “remarkably well printed, with good type, and it was not only better edited, and possessed more originality, but was larger in size than I think any country paper which appeared before the end of the century, for it consisted always of three leaves of the then newspaper size, and occasionally of four.” [6]


In spite of The Post-Man was published each Friday for the next Published on Fridays [7] Last known issue published on 4 March 1719/20 [8] 11 Issues survive in the British Library [ ] First newspaper in Shropshire [9] “in what part of the town he lived does not appear” in the Post-man [Wright 135] “this paper was far better got up materially, and better edited, than the ordinary newspapers for half a century afterwards.” [Wright 135] “remarkably well printed, with good type, and it was not only better edited, and possessed more originality, but was larger in size than I think any country paper which appeared before the end of the century, for it consisted always of three leaves of the then newspaper size, and occasionally of four.” [Wright 136]


In the second issue of the Ludlow Post-Man (16 October 1719), Parks announced that he needed an honest man who could “walk well, and be constant 2 or 3 days in the Week.” [Freshest Advices: Early Provincial Newspapers in England, R. M. Wiles Ohio State University Press: Ohio, 1965. page 122] There were very few advertisements [Wright 137] Very little in the way of local news [Wright 137] Failed in part due to lack of advertisers [Wiles page 159]


Two editions of sermons by Samuel Jones entitled The most Important Question, What is Truth; and a Prospect of the Demi Collegiate Church in Ludlow were printed in Ludlow 1719-20. [Wroth (1926) pages 37-38] [Lloyd 154]

A William Parks, son of William Parks and Elianor, was baptised 20 March 1719/20 in Ludlow [Lloyd 154] [Wroth (1926) page 10; and page 28, note 5]

Hereford, Reading and London

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In 1721 Wm Parks was publishing in Hereford: Pascha, or Dr. Prideaux's Vindication of the Rule and Table for finding Easter... [Wroth, 10, 38.] [Lloyd 154] Found at the Bodleian, Oxford.

At Hereford in 1721, also printed in Welsh Pechadur Jerusalem yn gadwedig (The Jerusalem Sinner Saved) by John Bunyan Cambrian Bibliography, by William Rowlands. John Pryse: Llanidloes, 1869. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=-AI-AAAAcAAJ&dq=Cambrian%20Bibliography&pg=PR6#v=onepage&q=Parks&f=false


On 8 July 1723 Parks and David Kinnier published the first newspaper in Berkshire, the Reading Mercury. [Wroth (1926) pages 10 and 38] and [Freshest Advices, page 32]

First two months, Parks and Kinnier offered free advertising to build the customer base “Till Michaelmas next, Advertiements will be taken in to be incerted in this Paper gratis, … So that any Persons who have Houses or Estates to be Lett or Sold; or have lost Horses, Cattle, &c. or would have any Business made Public 40 or 50 Miles round, may … have it advertis’d in this Paper” [Freshest Advices page 159]

“The Mercury was in design, layout, and content the equal of any London newspaper then being published”. [Winton, HBiA, 225]

“Parks apparently sold out his interest in the business to the partner David Kinnier: his name disappears from the masthead with Mercury No. 29 of January 20 1723/4.” [Winton, HBIA, 226]

It appears that Parks may have co-edited still another periodical, the Half-penny London Journal in London, in November 1724. [William L. Mitchell, “William Parks of LONDON?,” Factotum 40 (December 1995): pg 4. in Winton HBIA, 226.

Annapolis, Maryland

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Williamsburg, Virginia

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Notes

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  1. ^ Llewelyn C. Lloyd estimates Parks birth as before 1695, assuming “[h]e must have been at least twenty-four years of age when he set up in business at Ludlow [1719], as this was the earliest age at which a printer was allowed to practice his craft.” Lloyd, Llewelyn C., “The Book-trade in Shropshire: some accounts of the stationers, booksellers and printers at work in the county to about 1800”, Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological Society, vol 48, issues 1-2, Brown & Brinnand, Shrewsbury 1936, pp. 152-3.
  2. ^ Parks’s 1710 apprenticeship indenture describes his father, also named William Parks, as a yeoman of Stoke St. Milborough, located 6 miles (9 km) northeast of Ludlow. Worcester Public Record Office IR/1/41/52 in Cooper, Margaret, “The Apprentice and his Master: the Early Years of William Parks and Stephen Bryan”, Quadrat, Issue 10, January 2000, p. 12.
     Twenty-three years later, in Parks’s 1733 imprint A Collection of the Acts of Virginia, amongst the subscribers are four men who would seem to have no intrinsic interest in the Acts of Virginia: William Parks of Clee Stanton; Matthew Parks of Ledwich; Richard Parks, the Town Clerk of Ludlow; and Thomas Gough of Bitterley. All four lived within 5 miles (8 kilometers) of Ludlow, and the first three are traceable in the parish registers of Bitterly, which also reveal that Gough was allied with the Parks family by marriage. As Parks scholar Llewelyn C. Lloyd writes, “To suggest that these four persons were connected with the printer by family ties is surely no straining of probability.” Lloyd, 153.
     Further circumstantial evidence suggesting William Parks’ connection to Ludlow, and later Worcester, is found on a list of the inventory of his estate at the time of his death: “1 Negro Man Ludlow” and “1 Negro Man Named Worcester”. "Will of William Parks, The First Printer in Virginia, with Note by Lawrence C. Wroth" William and Mary Quarterly, Series 2, Vol. 2, No. 1, January 1922, William and Mary College, Williamsburg VA, p. 95. http://www.archive.org/stream/williammaryquart02instuoft/williammaryquart02instuoft_djvu.txt. See also, "Inventory of the estate of William Parks". Colonial Williamsburg Digital Library.
  3. ^ The earliest Shropshire newpaper, A Collection of All the Material News was published by Thomas Jones (1647-1713) in Shrewsbury in 1705—06 and possibly later. Wiles, Freshest Advices pp 16-17, 497-498. No copies are known to survive, but one 1706 issue is described in a 1922 sale catalogue http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=cmRZYpCJ6F8C&pg=RA2-PA48&lpg=RA2-PA48&dq=%22A+collection+of+all+the+material+News%22&source=bl&ots=Hfh_Lb_yUZ&sig=uFluZfPAi8jtmmxrRtV9KmJYg_s&hl=en&ei=S5K9TpnxDIWt8gPE8NiVBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&sqi=2&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=%22A%20collection%20of%20all%20the%20material%20News%22&f=false

References

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  1. ^ Worcester Public Record Office IR/1/41/52 in Cooper, Margaret, “The Apprentice and his Master: the Early Years of William Parks and Stephen Bryan”, Quadrat, Issue 10, January 2000, p. 12. ISSN: 1357-6666
  2. ^ Cooper, "The Apprentice and his Master" pp. 12-13
  3. ^ Wroth, Lawrence C., William Parks, Printer and Journalist of England and Colonial America, Appeals Press, Richmond VA, 1926, pp. 9, 37.
  4. ^ Wroth (1926) 9, 37
  5. ^ Wiles 65, 444
  6. ^ Wright 135-136
  7. ^ Wiles 65, 444
  8. ^ Wright 136
  9. ^ Wright 135

Works Cited

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  • Cooper, Margaret, “The Apprentice and his Master: the Early Years of William Parks and Stephen Bryan”, Quadrat, Issue 10, January 2000, pp. 12-16.
  • Lemay, JA Leo, Men of Letters in Colonial Maryland, Knoxville TN, University of Tennessee Press, 1972.
  • Lloyd, LC, “The Book-trade in Shropshire: some accounts of the stationers, booksellers and printers at work in the county to about 1800”, Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological Society, vol. 48, issues 1-2, 1936, pp. 99, 152-156.
  • Mott, Frank L., Chester E. Jorgenson, Benjamin Franklin: Representative Selections, with Introduction, Bibliography, and Notes, New York, American Book Company, 1936.
  • Wright, Thomas, Ludlow Sketches; a series of papers on the Scenery and Antiquities of Ludlow and its Neighbourhood, Ludlow, R. Jones, 1867.
  • Wiles, RM, Freshest Advices: Early Provincial Newspapers in England, WHERE, Ohio State University Press, 1965.
  • Wroth, Lawrence C., William Parks, Printer and Journalist of England and Colonial America, Richmond VA, Appeals Press for the William Parks Club, 1926.
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