OBITUARY - NANCY (KNOWLES) PARKER
PORTSMOUTH – Nancy Knowles Parker, 85, co-founder of Greenvale Vineyards in Portsmouth, RI and publisher of the New England Wine Gazette, died Saturday, January 10, 2015 in Boston, MA.
Mrs. Parker and her late husband, Cortlandt, who died in 2002, planted a vineyard in 1980 at Greenvale, Mr. Parker's family farm, dating back to 1860, and followed with the establishment of the winery in 1992. Greenvale Vineyards and Winery is now managed by Mrs. Parker's daughter, Nancy Parker Wilson.
Their interest in winemaking led Mr. and Mrs. Parker to found the New England Wine Gazette, as well as three other wine-related quarterly newspapers covering the wine regions of the Finger Lakes, Long Island and Virginia.
The Parkers earlier established a weekly newspaper chain in New Jersey now known as New Jersey Hills Media Group that includes 17 newspapers and 14 websites and covers 55 towns in north/central New Jersey. Mrs. Parker remained publisher emerita; two of her children, Elizabeth Knowles Parker and Stephen Ward Parker, are co-publishers.
Mrs. Parker was born in Buffalo, NY, the daughter of Ward Emerson Knowles and Barbara Bull Knowles. She attended the Park School of Buffalo, Chevy Chase Jr. College in Washington, DC and the New School in New York City.
She was employed as the first copy girl at the Washington Evening Star in the nation's capital, and later became a reporter for the Newark Evening News, where she met Mr. Parker, a fellow reporter at the New Jersey daily.
They left that paper to start their own weekly newspaper in Morris Township, New Jersey, and a year later bought The Bernardsville News. The company had grown into a seven-newspaper chain by the early 1980s. For a number of years, Mrs. Parker was editor of the newspapers' award-winning Community Living section and the founder of the media company's Out & About entertainment section. . . . .
In addition to her husband, Mrs. Parker was predeceased by two grandsons, Andrew and Daniel Parker.
Mrs. Parker is survived by her four children, Elizabeth Knowles Parker of New Vernon, NJ and her husband, Mark Magyar, Cortlandt Parker of Deltona, FL and his wife, Piedad, Stephen Ward Parker of Bernardsville and his wife, Elizabeth and Nancy Parker Wilson of Boston, MA and Portsmouth and her husband, William; 12 grandchildren, Katherine, Elizabeth, Alexander and Mark Parker-Magyar, Cort and Jeremiah Parker, Charlotte, Eleanor and James Parker, and Bennett, Billy and Parker Wilson; two step-grandchildren, Emily and Jessica Wilson; two great-grandchildren and two step-great-grandchildren, a niece, two nephews, two grand-nephews and a grand-niece.
Source: The Newport Daily News (Newport, RI), Jan. 2015 (findagrave.com)