Part 3
(Thanks to a reader who forwarded me this picture. John Clark is on the left)
John was married to Catherine Cummins, with whom he had eleven children. In the mid 1890s he then married Nettie Sarl (or Sorrell) and had seven more children. Several of his children died at young ages, and more than one was born a mute.
After the war, he returned to rural Bracken County, in the district of Berlin and resumed life on the farm. In 1867, white burley tobacco was produced for the first time, occurring in this very same Bracken County. John may have harvested that new crop in the following decades.
By 1935, he was living in Campbell County and an article in the
Kentucky Times Star of May 15 noted the celebration of his 92
nd birthday, with fifty family members and friends gathering in his house on Licking Pike. It noted “
In spite of his advanced age, Clark enjoys excellent health and makes frequent trips to Newport to visit his daughter.” Music was courtesy of the “Red-Headed Music Makers” and “
the aged veteran took an active part in the festivities.”
I have found no record as to if he was involved in reunions such as the GAR. A September 19, 1913 article in the Kentucky section of the
Cincinnati Times Star did report that, sadly, “
so rapid has been the onslaught of death on the veterans of the Tenth and Sixteenth Kentucky regiments that it is probable there will be no more reunions of the old soldiers.” It is very possible that he had attended at least some of these reunions in the Maysville area, one of which occurred on November 30, 1892, and for which a local railroad offered discounted fare for veterans attending the reunion.
This article reported the following statement issued by Mrs. C.C Degman, wife of the late secretary of the association:
“
The surviving comrades of the Tenth and Sixteenth Kentucky regiments are requested to meet at G.A.R. hall in Maysville on Wednesday, September 24, for a re-organization and considering the rapid depletion of the ranks and a final roll call before ‘crossing the bar.’ During the past year so many members of the association have died that it is impossible to get enough members together to hold a reunion. There were only about thirty members left in both regiments.”
Time stands still for no-one, not even the brave soldiers of the Civil War, and on April 26, 1940, John Clark passed away, a few days shy of his 97
th birthday.
According to the
Kentucky Post of the next day, he was the last surviving Civil War veteran in Campbell County. The article includes a picture of him, with his white mustache and carrying a cane, and says that he had participated in Newport’s 1939 Memorial Day Parade and had planned to do so again in 1940.
At his death, he was survived by his wife Nettie, seven daughters, three sons, thirty-two grandchildren and thirty great-grandchildren.
He was buried in Oakland Cemetery in Grants Lick, Kentucky, with a headstone proudly listing his unit information. In 1960, his wife passed away and a newer headstone was placed at the gravesite, but the original headstone also remains.
John Clark lived through a remarkable era in American history. To borrow a description from James Robbins’ book
Last in Their Class, they “
had lived through an age in which the United States and the world had seen dramatic changes...The era of the musket and the cavalry saber had given way to the machine gun, the tank, the aircraft carrier and the strategic bomber.” Inventions like the automobile, telephone, electric lights, radio and more had transformed the way many Americans lived. World War I had come and gone, and by the time John passed away, this nation that had been “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” was soon to face a conflict that would help make this nation a world superpower. It was an amazing century through which he had lived.
Sources for my original paper, most or all of which should be applicable to this article
E.E. Barton Papers on microfilm at the LDS Family History Center, Lakeside Park, Ky.
Military records from the National Archives
Last in their Class: Custer, Picket and the Goats of West Point by James S. Robbins, © 2006, Encounter Books, New York
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