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John Clark
The following are the names of most of those persons who settled in the township at the earliest dates:
Nathan Nichols and Amanda Hewland, in '46; Peter Row, William Frazer and James Frakes, in '48; John Clark, in '49; Daniel F. Smith in '50, and J. W. Hightree, in '52.
Of these John Clark is the oldest resident settler in the township, and D. F. Smith the next, the rest having moved away or deceased. John Clark was born in Tennessee, February 14th, 1815, came to this county in '49, arriving at Knoxville on the 26th of June. Having traded William Frazer a land warrant for a timber claim on White Breast Creek, he also made a prairie claim, built a cabin on the bottom, and moved to it on the 26th of July. In raising the cabin near help was so scarce that he had to resort to friends in Knoxville, and even then it required three days to put the building up.
The first milling Mr. Clark done was at Brobst's and Haymakers, on Cedar. In '55 he went to what was known as Beach's mill, now a place called Sumerset, on one of the Three Rivers, in Warren county. At that time there was, on the route to this mill, a wide stretch of uninhabited prairie, on which there was neither a tree, trail nor mound to guide the traveler who wished to cross it, and some one had set stakes at wide intervals as the only way-marks. Mr. Clark, with a wagon and two yoke of cattle, and accompanied by a man named Nathaniel Brown, had crossed this desert to Beach's, and remained there two days waiting for their grinding. Now being in some haste to get home, they set out in time to reach Hammondsburg before night. Here they concluded to tarry no longer than was required to feed and their teams and themselves, hoping to reach home long before midnight. So, without further delay, they drove on, but when darkness came they found it impossible to keep the way themselves, and thought it advisable to trust to the instinctive sagacity of their cattle to pilot them through. Unfortunate trust! The brutes, left to themselves, had lost their reckoning, and were as much at fault as their masters - if indeed they cared particularly about what direction they traveled. At all events, after plodding along in this way for a long time, Mr. Clark began to think something was wrong, and set about making a calculation of their locality as well as it could be done by starlight, the result of which calculation proved that they were far out of their way, indeed so far as the breaks of White Breast, not far from the south-west corner of the county. And here, to add to their vexation, the wagon ran into a slough, at which Brown became alarmed and begged Clark to camp till daylight. But the latter was disposed to lay out if such a contingency could be avoided; so they got the wagon out and proceeded, making a guiding point of certain stars, and reached home at about one o'clock.
Jackson McClain and John Clark planted the first orchards in '52. Of the sixty trees planted by Mr. C., but two now live. McClain's are mostly living.