Born in January 1809 in Massachusetts, Granville Parker was a lawyer who came to Cabell County shortly before the Civil War. A Unionist, he fled when A. G. Jenkins called for his arrest. From 1861 to 1863, he was a delegate to the constitutional convention for the new state, and he supported emancipation. Parker published his wartime accounts of WV statehood in 1875. He died in 1881 in Wellsburg.