Daniel Parke II (1664-1710)

Daniel Parke was the son of Daniel Parke and Rebecca Evelyn Parke. He married Jane Ludwell in ca. 1685. His two legitimate daughters who survived to adulthood were Frances Parke (Mrs. John Custis) and Lucy Parke (Mrs. William Byrd II). He left his family in Virginia behind and sought a career in England. He served as aide-de-camp to the Duke of Marlborough and was appointed Governor of the Leeward Islands, where he moved in 1706. In 1692, Daniel Parke sent his English cousin, John Evelyn, a portrait of himself and a “gentlewoman” from Virginia. There are several other portraits of this subject completed later in life: two by John Closterman (Virginia Museum of History & Culture and private collection), one by Sir Godfrey Kneller, and one by Michael Dahl.

Reference: “I hope you took Care of the Pictures according to yr Promimss,” Daniel Parke to John Evelyn, 13 July 1692 and “The two copies inclose a Picture of my Coz. Parke and a gentlewoman very ill done,” John Evelyn to John Evelyn, 26 October 1692.

See: Ruth Bourne, “John Evelyn, the Diarist, and His Cousin, Daniel Parke II,” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 78, 1 (1970), 18, 20; Encyclopedia Virginia