Clark, Edward

Born: 1790-02-16 Rye, United Kingdom

Died: 1875-01-10 Sangamon County, Illinois

Flourished: 1819 to 1875 Sangamon County, Illinois

Edward Clark, mill owner and farmer, came to the United States with his brother Philip Clark in 1818, and travelled extensively before arriving in Sangamon County in 1819, where he was among the earliest settlers of the township of Rochester. Edward Clark ultimately settled permanently along the South Fork of the Sangamon River, near where the village of Rochester was later established. Between 1823 and 1832, Clark purchased 560 acres of land in Sangamon County. The brothers erected a sawmill in the vicinity in 1824 and a flour mill the following year. Edward Clark donated lumber from his sawmill for the first public school building in the area of Rochester in 1831. He married first, Sarah (Sally) Viney in 1821, with whom he had eight children, and following her death married Nancy Trotter in 1838 and had three additional children. Clark encountered Abraham Lincoln in court several times from the 1830s to the 1850s. At the time of the 1860 census, Clark owned personal property valued at $32,000 and possessed personal property worth $2,000.

John Carroll Power and S. A. Power, History of the Early Settlers of Sangamon County, Illinois (Springfield, IL: Edwin A. Wilson, 1876), 202-4; History of Sangamon County, Illinois (Chicago: Inter-State, 1881), 445, 987, 988, 995, 997; Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, Sangamon County, 16 December 1821, 16 January 1838, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; Illinois Public Domain Land Tract Sales, Sangamon County, 68:6, 20, 30, 111, 112, 118, 119, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; U.S. Census Office, Fifth Census of the United States (1830), Sangamon County, IL, 169; U.S. Census Office, Sixth Census of the United States (1840), Sangamon County, IL, 49; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Sangamon County, IL, 267; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Sangamon County, IL, 26; For Lincoln's legal cases involving Clark, search Participant, “Clark, Edward,” Martha L. Benner and Cullom Davis et al., eds., The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln: Complete Documentary Edition, 2d edition (Springfield: Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, 2009), http://www.lawpracticeofabrahamlincoln.org; Daily Illinois State Register (Springfield), 11 January 1875, 4:1; 12 January 1875, 4:1; Gravestone, Cemetery, Sangamon County, IL.