William Parks (printer)

William Parks (born around 1700, believed to be in the English county of Shropshire ; died April 1, 1750 on the ship Nelson during the crossing from Virginia to England) was an English printer and publisher. He founded two of the oldest newspapers in North America, the Maryland Gazette (1727) and the Virginia Gazette ( 1736 ).

Life

England

Very little is known of Parks' early years; In 1719 he began publishing the weekly Ludlow-Post-Man in the English town of Ludlow . In the following years he also printed in Hereford and Reading . Among the books he has published is a Welsh translation of works by John Bunyan , which leads one to suspect that Parks might have been Welsh.

Maryland

First print of A Compleat Collection of the Laws of Maryland (1727)

First print of Ebenezer Cook's Sotweed Redivivus (1730)

In 1726 Parks moved to the North American colony of Maryland, probably at the invitation of the politician Thomas Bordley . Bordley, a leading member of the Liberal faction in the lower house of the colony, had the laws of the Maryland colony and the resolutions of its legislature printed for the first time in Philadelphia in 1725 and in the preface to this edition complained that important political decisions were made by the citizens of the colony in the absence of one Too often withheld from the printing press. In order to remedy the situation, he enforced the decision that Parks appointed the colony's official printer and the upper and lower houses to publish their decisions in his press. Parks was to be rewarded with 2,000 pounds of tobacco annually for printing parliamentary resolutions.

From 1726 until his death in 1750, Parks edited and printed a large number of leaflets, pamphlets and books in addition to official printed matter. With his workshop, many local writers for the first time the opportunity to publish their works locally, and Park's press is likely to have contributed significantly to the development of literature in Maryland. The first hardcover book in his Annapolis workshop was a 312-page folio , A Compleat Collection of the Laws of Maryland , 1727, Richard Lewis' first literary work A Mousetrap , an English adaptation of Edward Holdsworth's Latin Epyllion Muscipula .

Then on September 12, 1727, the first edition of the Maryland Gazette appeared , the first newspaper in the colony. In addition to news from all over the world, it also published works of fiction such as the poems of Ebenezer Cook and Richard Lewis. In addition, Parks intervened with his decisions as editor in the political debates of the time; The essay series Plain Dealer , in which, among other things, the pros and cons of deism are discussed, is also one of the political writings in the broadest sense . Most of the essays in Parks Maryland Gazette were written anonymously or under a pseudonym, and many were plagiarized by English authors. One of his most daring editorial decisions was the reprint of A Tale of the Turd , a scatological poem that had previously only appeared in Jonathan Swift's The Intelligencer .

Few of the early issues of the Maryland Gazette have survived; the oldest is No. 65 from December 10, 1728. The publication was continued with interruptions until 1734 and then discontinued. The title was not revived until 1745, but without Park's involvement, and continued until 1839. Although continuity does not seem inevitable, the daily newspaper The Capital traces its origins back to Parks' Maryland Gazette , which is still published today .

Virginia

Around 1727/28 Parks succeeded in convincing the parliament of the colony of Virginia (the House of Burgesses ) of the need to publish its resolutions. In 1729 he traveled to England to purchase a second press, after his return in 1730 he settled permanently in Williamsburg , the capital of Virginia, and left his workshop in Annapolis to the supervision of his assistant Edmund Hall. In Virginia Parks initially also printed legal texts according to his order; A Collection of All the Acts of Assembly of Virginia was finally published in 1733 . Parks initially received an annual salary of £ 120 from Parliament for his services, and after some increases, from 1744 onwards, even £ 280. Occasionally he got caught in the mill of the constant conflict between the lower and upper houses of parliament. In 1749, for example, members of the House of Lords (the Governor's Council ) summoned him to court for belatedly reprinting a statement accusing the House of Commons of unfair methods and espionage.

Parks soon started a popular newspaper in Virginia as well. The first four-page edition of the Virginia Gazette appeared on August 6, 1736. The motto of the newspaper was Containing the freshest advices, foreign and domestick , but Parks mainly printed news from all over the world that reached him and his friends by post. Events from Virginia were rarely covered. Occasionally a runaway slave or a stolen horse was worth reporting, but especially in winter, when the sessions of the colonial assembly were suspended for months, there was little to report. Parks also relied on advertising early on and was a pioneer of American newspaper printing in this regard too. As early as October 1736 he placed an appeal to potential advertisers:

And as these Papers will circulate (as speedily as possible) not only all over This, but also the Neighboring Colonies, and will probably be read by some Thousands of People, it is very likely that may have the desir'd Effect; and it is certainly the cheapest and most effectual method that can be taken for publishing any thing of this nature.

Parks also continued to print poems and essays by English authors. Benjamin Franklin did some of these for his Philadelphia Pennsylvania Gazette . In 1743, at Franklin's insistence, Parks set up his own paper mill so that he no longer had to import expensive sheets from England. At first, he bought tons of rags for paper production from Franklin, and later he made frequent calls to the Gazette to ask for textile donations.

Parks died in 1750 on board the ship Nelson , on which he had embarked for England, presumably to buy technical equipment. He was buried in the English port city of Gosport . After Park's death, the Virginia Gazette was temporarily closed, but was continued by William Hunter in 1751.

literature

• Sidney Kobre: The Development of the Colonial Newspaper . Pittsburgh, 1944.
• JA Leo Lemay : Men of Letters in Colonial Maryland. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville 1972. pp. 111-126
• A. Franklin Parks: William Parks: The Colonial Printer in the Transatlantic World of the Eighteenth Century. Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park 2012, ISBN 978-0-271-05211-3 .
• Lawrence C. Wroth: A History of Printing in Colonial Maryland 1686-1776 . Typothetae of Baltimore 1922. (Digitized: Internet Archive ; Maryland State Archives )
• Lawrence C. Wroth: William Parks: Printer and Journalist of England and Colonial America . Richmond 1926.

swell

1. ↑ Lemay, p. 111
2. ^ Wroth, p. 60
3. ^ Wroth, p. 59
4. ^ Maryland Gazette Collection - Maryland State Archives.
5. ^ The Capital Online
6. ^ Quoted in A History of the Virginia Gazette on the newspaper's website