John Parker was an American frontiersman, soldier, surveyor, minister and diplomat. He was born in 1758 in Baltimore County, Maryland. At a young age, Parker's family moved from Maryland to Virginia, where they took part in scouting the frontier in present-day Kentucky and Tennessee alongside Daniel Boone and other American pioneers. After the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War in 1776, frontier conflicts between Patriot settlers and British-allied Indians erupted, which led to the deaths of several of Parker's family members and friends. Parker enlisted in the Continental Army and participated in numerous Patriot campaigns in the western theater of the American Revolutionary War.