My Genealogy Hound

HIRAM C. CLARK, a literateur of note, has been living in Jamestown since 1872. He was burn at Norwich, Chenango county, New York, on July 9, 1816, his parents being Lot and Lavina (Crosby) Clark, both of whom came from old and distinguished families. His grandfather, Watrous Clark, was born in the State of Massachusetts in 1759, and with his two brothers served in the naval department of the colonial forces during the struggle for America’s independence. His two brothers were lost at sea. At the close of the war, Watrous migrated into Otsego county, in this State, and followed farming, and being of a mechanical turn also, used farm tools of his own manufacture, until his death which occurred in 1831. Politically Mr. Clark was a quiet voter and of unassuming demeanor, and was a member of the Baptist church. He was not a politician. His wife was Sarah Saxton, of Columbia county, this State, and they had three sons and five daughters. David Crosby was the maternal grandfather of our subject, who came from English stock but was born in Connecticut and removed to Broome county, New York, where he owned large tracts of land which he tilled. He died in Chenango county, in 1820, aged eighty years. Lot Clark, father of Hiram C., and second son of Watrous Clark, was born in Columbia county, near Kinderhook, this State, in the year 1788. Securing as thorough an education as the times afforded, he studied law, and after being admitted to the bar, practiced for twelve years in the town of Norwich, Chenango county, and was some years district attorney of that county. Succeeding his law practice he became a projector of large enterprizes, and among others of note, was the first original railroad wire suspension bridge which crosses the Niagara river below the falls and was completed about 1848. He became and was president of that bridge company until his death in 1862. At one time he was perhaps the largest individual land-holder in the Empire State, being a proprietor of one-third interest in a ninety thousand acre tract, and as many other acres in other states in the west. Politically Mr. Clark was an old-time democrat and was elected by his party to a seat in the eighteenth Congress of the United States, serving there in 1823-24; but upon the sub-treasury issue, he was not in accord with his party and in 1840, voted for William Henry Harrison for president. While in Congress Mr. Clark became very popular and was the leader of the New York delegation, at least at the time so styled. In 1840 he became an intimate and a permanent friend, socially and politically of Henry Clay and other whigs of prominence, whose reputation have survived them. He was elected in 1846 to the legislature of New York, to compel the democrats to complete the enlargement of the Erie canal. When Gen. Jackson was president he invited Mr. Clark into his cabinet, by offering to him the appointment of attorney-general, but this was declined. His first wife was Lavina Crosby, who bore him four children, all sons, who became prominent in localities where they lived: Hiram C.; Lot C., who held the office of district attorney on Staten Island for eleven years and was private counsel on the island to Commodore Vanderbilt for a number of years; Joseph B. Clark became an alderman in the city of Detroit, Michigan; and William C., moved to Illinois, and was owner of a fine land estate.

Hiram C. Clark was educated in private schools and advanced to higher education through the aid of professors and private tutors. He was appointed cadet at West Point but resigned, considering that his nervous disposition unfitted him for the strain incumbent on the routine of a successful martinet or college life. From 1833 to 1837 he lived in Augusta, Ga., as assistant to his brother-in-law in a grocery store. Returning to New York he was, in 1840, admitted to the bar, and also edited in 1849, a history of his native, Chenango county, and in the same year went to San Francisco California, where he remained and practiced law until 1865, when, returning to New York in 1866 he decided upon a European tour and went to London, where six out of the ten ensuing years were spent. During this sojourn abroad the columns of the San Francisco (California) Daily Bulletin, were enlivened by regular correspondence from his facile pen. Returning from England in 1872, he selected Jamestown for his future home and has since resided here devoting his attention to literary recreation, travel and newspaper correspondence.

On November 23, 1857, Mr. Clark was united in marriage to Mrs. Sarah Thompson, a native of Nottingham, England, and after her death, in 1869, in 1871 he wedded Jane, the daughter of Samuel Dixion, a resident of New York but who came of Scotch parentage. It should not be overlooked that while stopping in Augusta, Ga., when the Seminole war of 1835 broke out and men were scarce, Mr. Clark, then a very young man, joined the Richmond Blues, a famous organization, and served six months as a United States soldier and received 160 acres of government land. It was not, however, with the sword but with his pen that he achieved prominence, and many articles of great merit have originated in his brain. In journalism and its circles he has been recognized as a prolific newspaper correspondent of his day, and among his interesting collection of papers, are letters showing correspondence and intercourse with the prominent public men of days agone. Mr. Clark is an interesting, intelligent and able man who has seen the American Republic develop from childhood into its present stature. He is possessed of a store of information sufficient to fill a valuable book of reminiscences. Mr. Clark, though possessed of personal convictions in regard to politics, is in no sense a politician. That is to say, he has never yet sat as a member of a political convention; has never assisted a politician or himself, to obtain a nomination for public office. He regards knowledge of the law a full occupation for the common mind without any admixture of politics. Law, divinity, statecraft, pure and separate are praiseworthy and useful; but when amalgamated are too often otherwise, not to say, sometimes mischievous to the public welfare. His creed has been that great characters may over multiply their abilities to the injury of their reputation.