William Henry Parker

William Henry Parker was born at New Basford, Nottingham, England, on March 4, 1845. He joined a General Baptist congregation and became closely involved in Sunday-school work, especially at Chelsea Street Baptist Church in New Basford. His writing grew out of that ministry: he supplied hymns for Sunday-school anniversary services and shaped Christian teaching into language intended for young singers. Three of his hymns entered The School Hymnal in 1880 and The Children's Book of Praise in 1881, and he published The Princess Alice and Other Poems in 1882.

Parker wrote Tell Me the Stories of Jesus in 1885. A later account says the immediate prompt was his pupils' request for another story, but no contemporary diary or manuscript has been located to document the exchange; the well-established setting is his work among children. The Sunday School Hymnary of 1905 included fifteen Parker texts and preserved this hymn in six stanzas. Other indexed works include Holy Spirit, Hear Us and Jesus, I So Often Need Thee. Later reference works disagree about Parker's secular occupation, identifying him either with an insurance company or as a machinist in Nottingham's lace industry, so that detail should not be stated as settled fact. His securely documented contribution is a sustained body of General Baptist children's hymnody rooted in Sunday-school teaching.