John Clark was the first County Court Clerk of Christian Co., from 1797 to 1824 except for a brief period in 1798 when Justinian Cartwright served in that position.

John Clark owned many hundreds of acres of land and water grist mills in this county.  A portion of Hopkinsville was built on Clark's addition.  When he moved to Callaway Co., Missouri, in 1824-25, his home was south of Hopkinsville on the Palmyra Rd. (now Lafayette Rd.).

John Clark was a son of Col. Henry and Sarah Jones Clark.  His siblings were:  Benjamin married, it is believed, Patience Dillingham; Isaac

married 1st a Miss Campbell, 2nd Mary French; Henry, Jr. married Betsy Davis, daughter of James and Deborah Miller Davis; Susannah married John Wheeler, a Revolutionary War veteran; Mary Ann married Thomas  Whiteside [actually, she married Thomas's brother, Francis Whiteside]; Sarah married Isaac Davis, son of James and Hannah Ramsey Davis [this ancestry is disputed — Isaac's parentage has not been proven].

The first wife of John Clark was Lucy Elliott by whom he fathered nine children.  The second wife was Sarah F., widow of a Mr. Samuels.  One child was born from this marriage.  The third wife was Elizabeth (Betsy) Chick Read, widow of Alexander Read.  There were seven children born of this third marriage.

Many members of the Clark family moved to Missouri and were numbered among the pioneer families of that state. John Clark's will was probated in Callaway Co., Missouri, in Feb. 1831.

When the Revolutionary War started the Clark family (Col. Henry) was living in Greene Co., N.C. (later to be in Tenn.) on Kendricks Creek about 5 miles from Long Island on the Holstein [Holston] River.  Col. Clark, his son Captain Benjamin Clark, and his son-in-law, John Wheeler, were in several battles with the Indians that took place in that area.

Col. Henry Clark lived in the south eastern part of this county dying here in 1823.  Henry, Jr.'s land was near the present town of Oak Grove and [he] is buried on his land having died in 1858 [?5 Jun 1854?].  Benjamin Clark's land was in the N.W. part of the county and eventually was located in Caldwell. John Wheeler settled here in 1796, but his land, after all the divisions of lands into new counties, is to be found in Crittenden Co.

John Clark's land on the Palmyra Rd. was sold to Dr. Gordon F. Saltonstall and contained 1332 acres.  Another tract of the Clark land was sold to Samuel Shryock, containing 573 acres, on which sat the Brick Unitarian Church.  A wooded area today is still known as the Saltonstall Woods by people living in that neighborhood.

The records of this county housed in the court house in 1986, written or supervised by John Clark from 1797 to 1824, are a lasting tribute to this pioneer settler of Christian Co., Ky.  (Data for this sketch from "Pioneer Setters [sic] of Missouri," and land records of Christian County, Ky., and other local sources).