Fayette County PA Archives Biographies.....Clark, John A. January 29, 1842 - ????
************************************************
Copyright.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/pafiles.htm
************************************************

File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Marta Burns marta43@juno.com August 26, 2024, 1:13 pm

Source: Gresham and Wiley, 1889: Biographical & Portrait Cyclopedia, Fayette Co, PA, pg 254
Author: John H. Gresham & Samuel T. Wiley

    John A Clark was born January 29, 1842, near Morgantown, 
Monongalia county, West Virginia, is the oldest son of 
William F Clark and Sarah A Batton Clark, a daughter of John 
Batton of Springhill township, who was a strong democrat and 
a good farmer.  
    His father, William F Clark, was born in Virginia, March 
21, 1814.  He clerked in his father's store until he 
attained his majority, when he went to Mobile, Alabama, and 
engaged with his brother in the mercantile business.  Six 
years later he came to Springhill township, leased a farm 
and engaged in farming, but soon removed to West Virginia 
where he followed the same business for eleven years, and 
then returned to Springhill where he purchased property.  
    In 1870 he visited Missouri and three years later 
removed to that State, but soon left and located in the 
Nehema Valley, Nebraska, where he now resides, and is 
engaged in the mercantile business.  He is a well-preserved 
old gentleman needing neither glasses nor a cane.  
    He was married to Sarah A Batton.  Their union was 
blessed with eight children.  She died in 1865.  
    His paternal grandfather Clark was a Virginia merchant 
and owned a large number of slaves.  
    John A Clark attended common schools of Springhill 
township, and spent some time in the subscription schools of 
Virginia.  He took two courses in the Southwestern 
Pennsylvania Normal School, one in the summer of 1863, the 
other during the following summer, and followed teaching in 
the common schools for four years.  From 1867 to 1871 he was 
engaged in cultivating his farm near Morris Cross Roads.  
    In 1871 he engaged in the lumber business, having a saw 
mill near Morris Cross Roads.  Eighteen months later he went 
into partnership with his father-in-law and they erected a 
saw mill at Crow's ferry on Cheat river.  
    In 1874 he began the erection of a planing mill at Point 
Marion.  In 1881 he attached a saw mill, and the whole 
structure was terribly wrecked by a cyclone that struck it 
on March 24, 1887.  The next day he began to rebuild the 
mill and repair his dwelling house that had been badly 
damaged.  
    When rebuilt he operated the mill until the flood of 
July 10, 1888, came and swept his mill buildings of their 
foundations and badly damaged the machinery.  He is now 
preparing to build a mill on the opposite side of the river 
on a site above the high water mark.  
    Mr Clark was married October 11, 1886, to Miss Martha 
Dillner.  Of this union three children were born: May Clark, 
Charles Clark and an infant which is dead.  
    January 18, 1882, Mr Clark was married a second time to 
Miss Elizabeth Dunham and by this marriage has one child: 
James Daniel Clark.  
    Mr Clark in politics is a democrat and in religious 
belief a Methodist Protestant.  He is of German-French and 
Irish-Scotch descent.

Additional Comments:
Originally submitted 2000.

This file has been created by a form at http://www.usgwarchives.net/pafiles/

File size: 3.5 Kb