Scotch-Irish-L Archives
Archiver > Scotch-Irish > 2009-09 > 1252513280
From:
Subject: [S-I] Info on the Rev ThomasClark
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 2009 16:21:20 +0000 (UTC)
In-Reply-To: <1500010690.199941252511978184.JavaMail.root@sz0165a.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net>
Here's some information in him. Apparently he bought and settled land in New York. It has much detail on his leaving with members of the congregation. http://www.ithaca.edu/staff/jhenderson/witch.html
"His congregation left with Clark aboard the ship "John" from the port of Newry, Ireland, on May 10, 1764, and arrived in New York on July 28. The ship's arrival was reported in the New York Gazette , August 6, 1764:
'Last week in the Ship John, from Newry, Ireland, Luke Kiersted, master, there arrived about three hundred passengers, a hundred and forty of whom, together with the Rev. Clarke, embarked on the 30th ult., with their stores, farming and manufacturing utensils, in two sloops, for Albany, from whence they are to proceed to the lands near Lake George, which were lately surveyed for their accommodation, as their principal view is to carry on the linen and hempen manufacture to which they were all brought up.'"
It gives the history of the community in the New World:
"One sign that Clark's congregation could be argumentative and disharmonious (as many Presbyterians throughout America were depicted by their fellow colonists) was that the congregation split in two before the new settlement was completed, and almost a hundred households moved to Abbeville County, South Carolina." Etc, etc.
" In the spring of 1765, seeking a permanent home for his congregation, Clark bought half of a 25,000-acre tract of land in what is now Salem, New York. This patent was divided up into 308 lots, plus a large pine lot reserved for the common benefit and three lots set apart for the use of the preacher and a schoolmaster. They traveled up the Hudson and settled first in Stillwater, just north of Albany, where they lived for two years under primitive conditions while engaging in desperately hard work to clear land in the new frontier. They built houses, but first they constructed a church"
Wonderful pages.
Linda Merle
This thread: