WILLIAM CLARK

CLARK

Posted By: Jake Tornholm (email)
Date: 4/22/2020 at 19:05:48

WILLIAM CLARK is a member of the firm of Clark & Co., proprietors of the River Roller Mills near Red Oak. This mill was established about 1870, by Samuel Wheeler, an old-time miller of this county. It was later operated for some time by J. J. Monk. Mr. Clark leased the mill in 1882 and afterward bought out the owners. The building is a substantial one, forty feet square and about forty feet high, has a double set of rollers, with a capacity of eighty barrels a day, of first-class flour. The company therefore has a large local trade, shipping some to adjacent towns and some even to Chicago. The products of their mill give the best satisfaction everywhere they are used. The son, E. E. Clark, a practical miller of nine years' experience, is a partner.

Mr. William Clark, the senior member of the firm, came here in the spring of 1869. He was born in Adams county, Pennsylvania, March 6, 1838, a son of James Clark, who was a native of Ireland and came to America when a young man, and was married in Pennsylvania, to Miss Adaline Bittinger, a native of that State. The father was a contractor and builder of pikes and public roads. Mr. Clark was reared in Adams and Franklin counties, of the Keystone State, until sixteen years of age. At the age of eighteen he went to Mt. Carroll, Illinois, where he was engaged in the wood trade and in the grocery business. In 1869 he came to Montgomery county, and opened up a new farm west of Red Oak; later he was engaged as a brick mason in this city, and afterward in the butcher's trade, and finally, in 1882, he entered the milling business. He also has a good farm and is a successful feeder of live-stock and dealer in the same.

February 7, 1861, at Mt. Carroll, Illinois, Mr. Clark was married to Miss Maria J. Adair, a native of Pennsylvania who was reared at Mt. Carroll, and they have four children, viz.: E. E., who is in company with his father; F. H., a clerk in the postoffice at Omaha; Jesse N., at Mt. Pleasant, Iowa; and Nellie, at home. The family lost one by death, their fourth child, at the age of three years.

In his political sympathies, Mr. Clark is a radical Republican; in religion he is a member of the Methodist Episcopal church, in which he is steward, class-leader and Sunday-school worker; and his wife and three children are also members of the same church. Mr. Clark is in the prime of life, intelligent, cordial and highly respected.