John Parker

Born	Bradford, MA
Died	1803-05-05
Select Board
In Office	1766 - 1785
Children	John (b. 1756-05-09) Stephen (b. 1760-12-01)

John Parker, son of Daniel Parker, was born in Bradford, Massachusetts, in 1720 and came to Billerica a little before 1750. He was a tanner, and he built up a prosperous tanning business along the brook south of the common, where he also built his house. Hazen notes that "during the Revolution, his business was very prosperous." Soon after 1755 he bought the Ruggles mansion house and most of its land on what is now River Street, a property still listed in his estate as the "Ruggles Farm" when he died.

In 1751 he married Abigail Kidder, daughter of Enoch Kidder, which tied the Parkers to one of the town's first families and, a generation later, to the old Kidder homestead. Abigail died on August 17, 1777. Their children included Sarah, who married Samuel Hill; John (born 1756), later a selectman and representative; Stephen Parker (born 1760), who carried on the family's River Street homes; Daniel, a tanner in Charlestown; and Samuel, a skilled machinist who patented a machine for splitting leather that was long built at the Hill machine shop in South Billerica.

He served the town for eighteen years as a selectman, from 1766 to 1780 and again from 1782 to 1784, through the whole of the Revolutionary War. He died on May 5, 1803, aged 83.

His descendants stayed in Billerica Centre for more than 150 years. The MACRIS survey of the Ruggles-Parker House observes that "the Parker family was influential in Billerica affairs from 1750 until after 1900," through his son Stephen, his grandsons Gardner Parker and Dr. Daniel Parker, and his great-grandson John Nelson Parker. The Parker School, which the town opened on River Street in 1953 near the family's old homesteads and beside Parker Street, carries the Parker family name.

John Parker

John Parker

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