Parks School, district 64, stands in section 28 of Crab Orchard Township. The district was organized about 1862 from part of the Motsinger school district. W.C. Parks gave the land and the school was named for him. L. W. Shackleford was the first teacher.
Parks has been a well-known name in the county since 1820 when five brothers came to find new homes along Crab Orchard Creek. Their father was one of the riflemen who fought the British at King’s Mountain in 1780. The Parks families helped with the building of Coal Bank Church in 1823.
When Hugh Parks came home from the Black Hawk War (he was second lieutenant of Captain Obediah West’s company) he opened one of the first stores in the county. That store became one of the chief businesses of the village of Crab Orchard where three generations of the Parks family were merchants.
Hugh Miles Parks was a merchant in Marion and sheriff from 1894 to 1898. He became a partner in building the railroad to Pittsburg that opened the coal field in the east part of the county.
Aud Parks was elected county treasurer in 1914.
(Extracted from Pioneer Folks and Places, Barbara Barr Hubbs, 1939 which is on sale at the Williamson County Museum)