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Colonel Thos. W. Clark |
| During the war of 1812 Mr. William Clark, of the Commissariat, was
attached to the Turkey Point division of the Canadian militia, and was stationed for a
time at Port Dover under the command of Col. Nichols. While Mr. Clark was in active
service his wife lived with her father in the Township of Rainham, County of Haldimand,
and it was there that Thomas Clark, the subject of our sketch, was born on the 23rd
February 1812. In the following year Mr. William Clark died, and after two or three years
his widow married Mr. Aaron Slaght, one of the pioneers of the Township of
Townsend. Col.
Clark spent his youth on his step-father's farm, attending a very primitive school only a
couple of months each winter; natural shrewdness and perseverance, however, compensated to
a great extent for these disadvantages, and the Colonel is today one of the best informed
and most intelligent men of his township. He has always been engaged in agricultural
pursuits, and was also for twelve years a successful merchant and miller. He is now (1877)
sixty-five years old, and has, during a long and useful life, amassed a comfortable
fortune, and is the owner of one of the finest farms in the county. He was married in 1833
to Nancy Culver, a daughter of the late Gabriel Culver, of the neighboring Township of
Windham. Mrs. Clark is still living as also their nine children--five sons and four
daughters.
Col. Clark recalls many amusing and instructive incidents of bush life in the early days of Townsend. When he was sixteen years old the Township was so sparsely settled that it required the whole male population with a radius of six miles to raise the frame of a small barn; there was not a buggy or other one horse wheel vehicle in the Township and not more that two or three lumber wagons. There was no money in circulation -- whiskey was the only basis of value and the only circulating medium, and no "well off" farmer was without six to twelve barrels in his cellar -- not for his own use, of course, but obtained in exchange for his products. The Colonel is genial and obliging, and is deservedly esteemed by a large circle of friends. But it is as a public man that he deserves more especial mention in this work. When the Common School Act was passed in 1845 he was elected one of the first three commissioners for Townsend, and when that Township was first set apart for municipal purposes, Colonel Clark was chosen its first Reeve, which position he has filled at various times since. He has been in the Township Council in all, twelve years, and has filled the different positions to which he was elected with great advantage to his Township. In 1852 he was appointed a Justice of the Peace, and since that time has been an active and efficient magistrate. He is descended from a military ancestry, his father and grandfather having been
officers in the British army, and his maternal grandfather a United Empire Loyalist; it is
therefore no matter for wonder that Colonel Clark should have always displayed a talent
and a taste for military affairs. He has been a commissioned officer in the Canadian
militia for the last thirty years, and now fills the honorable position of Lieutenant-Colonel of the
Regimental Division of the Norfolk Riding of Norfolk. |
 Enlargement |
| From pages 64 and 67 of the Mika re-print of
1877 Illustrated Historical Atlas of Norfolk County Copyright 1998-2012 John Cardiff |
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