Charles Wallingford Parker, son of Charles and Mary Hildreth Wallingford Parker, was born in Framingham, Massachusetts, on June 27, 1831. He was educated at the Framingham Academy, which he attended until he reached the age of sixteen. He left home and became employed by the clothing store of Addison Macullar in Worcester, as office boy, salesman, and bookkeeper. The firm moved to Boston in 1849; Parker was admitted to the firm in 1860, the name becoming Macullar Williams & Parker. Williams retired from the firm in 1879, and in 1895, after the death of Macullar, the firm became a corporation under the name of the Macullar Parker Company, of which Parker was president. He was also for many years president of the George's River Woolen Mills. In connection with his business, he made many trips to Europe and he became very much interested in horticulture, in which he applied his skill and information to the development of his beautiful gardens at Marblehead Neck on the estate where he made his summer home for many years.

Parker was a member of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, being President in the years 1911 and 1912, the Bostonian Society, the Massachusetts Society of Colonial Wars, the Sons of the American Revolution, the Unitarian Club, the Essex Institute, the Massachusetts Fish and Game Protective Association, the Algonquin Club, the Boston Chamber of Commerce, and the New England Historic Genealogical Society. He became a member of the Lynn Historical Society on September 20, 1909. He died at his home, 228 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, on January 24, 1915.

He married first Mary Jane Schoff (1832-1899) on November 30, 1854, and they had the following children: Mary (1856-1936), Charles Schoff (1860-1930), Herman (1866-1946), Allston (1869-1870), and Ross (1871-1948). After Mary Jane’s death, he married Morgiana Heath Schoff (born 1840) on October 8, 1900.