William Andrews Clark Sr (1839 - 1925)

Born 8 Jan 1839 in Connellsville, Fayette, Pennsylvania, United States

Ancestors

Husband of Anna Eugenia (La Chapelle) Clark — married 1901 in France

Died 2 Mar 1925 at age 86 in New York City, New York, United States

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Preceded by Lee Mantle Preceded by Thomas H. Carter

William A. Clark US Senator (Class 1) from Montana 1899—1900 US Senator (Class 2) from Montana 1901—1907

Succeeded by Paris Gibson Succeeded by Joseph M. Dixon

Biography

William Clark Sr is Notable.

US Senator. Born near Connellsville, Pennsylvania, he taught school in Iowa, studied law at the Iowa Wesleyan University, then relocated to Central City, Colorado, in 1862. The following year, he went to Montana, settled in Bannack and became successful in copper mining. As a member of Montana militia, he served as a Major of a battalion that pursued Chief Joseph and his band of Nez Perce Indians to the Bear Paw Mountains of Montana, in 1877. In 1899, he was elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate, serving until 1907. Not a candidate for reelection, he resumed his copper mining and also engaged in railroad interests until his death at age 86.

W. A. Clark was an American politician and entrepreneur, involved with mining, banking, and railroads. He had one of America's greatest fortunes, dug out of the copper mines of Montana and Arizona, the copper that carried electricity to the world. . . . William Andrews Clark, sounded like the embodiment of the American dream: a Pennsylvania farm boy born in a log cabin, a prospector for gold, a banker, and a U. S. senator from Montana. W. A. Clark was also a railroad baron, connecting the transcontinental lines to a sleepy California port called Los Angeles. And along the way, he auctioned off the lots that became downtown Las Vegas. The newspapers of the early 1900s couldn't decide who was the wealthiest man in America in that age before personal income tax. THE NEW YORK TIMES calculated in 1907 that if you counted only the money already in the banks, oilman John D. Rockefeller was tops. However, if you also included the wealth still to be brought up from underground, the TIMES decided that copper king W. A. Clark might prove to be richer than Rockefeller. W. A. Clark also had one of the more controversial political careers in American history. He was forced to resign from the U. S.Senate for paying bribes to get the seat in the first place. Undeterred, he was reelectd. While serving in the Senate in 1904, the widower with grown children shocked the political world by revealing a secret marriage to a woman thirty-nine years his junior. At the time of the announcement, the senator and Anna LaChapelle Clark already had a two-year-old daughter, Andree. . . . the second child of that marriage, Huguette Clark, was born in 1906 in Paris. . . . . . When W. A. Clark died in 1925, he left an estate estimated at $100 million to $250 million, worth up to $3.4 billion today. [2014] One fifth of the estate went to eighteen-year-old Huguette, who was depicted in cartoons as a spoiled poor little rich girl. In the histories and magazine cover stories of his time, the word most often associated with W. A. Clark was "incredible." But after his death, his businesses were sold, and the Clark name faded. He may be the most famous American whom most Americans today have never heard of. The length of history spanned by father and daughter is hard to comprehend. W. A. Clrk was born in 1839, during the administration of the eighth president of the United States, Martin Van Buren. W. A. was twenty-two when the Civil War began. When Huguette was born in 1906, Theodore Roosevelt, the twenty-sixth president, was in the White House. Yet 170 years after W. A.'s birth, his youngest child was still alive at the age of 103 during the time of the forty-fourth president, Barack Obama.

Legacy

• Clark County, Nevada is named in his honor.

Sources

• Find A Grave Memorial# 7255447
• Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/7255447/william-andrews-clark : accessed 02 May 2022), memorial page for William Andrews Clark (8 Jan 1839–2 Mar 1925), Find a Grave Memorial ID 7255447, citing Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, Bronx County, New York, USA ; Maintained by Find a Grave * Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• Wikipedia
• EMPTY MANSIONS, The Mysterious Life of HUGUETTE CLARK and the Spending of a Great American Fortune, by Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell, Jr., published by: 2014 Ballantine Books Trade Paperback edition
• The Fanily of W. A. Clark (PDF Tree)
• Huguette Clark Family Tree