CLARK, ELHANAN WINCHESTER

CLARK, TIDD

Posted By: Volunteer (email)
Date: 5/31/2005 at 16:57:48

Biography reproduced from page 458 of the History of Kossuth and Humboldt Counties, Iowa published in 1884:

Elhanan Winchester Clark was born in Penobscott Co., Maine, thirty miles northwest of Bangor, Dec. 22, 1822. He was an overseer in the Lancaster gingham factory in Massachusetts, three years. He became, as it appeared, a victim to that fell disease, consumption. He traveled in the south for his health, one year, without avail. He then came to Iowa in 1857, where, in a measure, he regained his health. He preempted 143½ acres of land in the then township of Irvington, but has since been set off into Cresco township, Kossuth county. He still lives on the original claim, in a comfortable vine clad cottage, 24x33 feet in size, built largely from timber of his own planting—one tree of which made 250 feet of lumber in fourteen years growth. He has a good barn; a well dug and bored fifty feet deep, supplying an abundance of water. Mr. Clark purchased eighty acres more of land in a few years, and Mrs. Clark came into possession of a 135 acre homestead, through her parents, thus making quite a large farm. They have 230 acres under improvement, the remainder being in grass and timber land. He recently set off 100 acres to his son, Elhanan Clesson Clark. Mr. Clark was married March 15, 1846, to Susan C. Tidd. They have five children—Ernest Eugene, Edward Prentiss, Elhanan Clesson, William Albert and Charles Elmer. Mr. Clark and his family are Universalists in religion, strong republicans and advocates of the Maine liquor law, he being one of its founders.