Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Parker, Henry

PARKER, Henry, president of Georgia, b. near Savannah, Ga., about 1690; d. in the isle of Hope, Ga., after 1777. He was bailiff of Savannah in 1734, which office at that time was identical with that of magistrate, and shortly afterward he colonized the isle of Hope. When the province was divided into two counties in 1741, he became an assistant to Sir William Stephens, president of the Savannah province, succeeding him in 1750. In that year he presided over the first assembly in Georgia, in which the executive and the members addressed each other according to parliamentary formalities. When the province surrendered the charter in 1754, he resigned the governorship and retired to his plantation on the isle of Hope, where he died at an advanced age.