James Wilburn Clark (1824 - 1890)

Born 23 Nov 1824 in Burke, North Carolina, United States

Ancestors

Husband of Suzannah (Lusk) Clark — married 2 Dec 1848 in Ashe Co., NC

Descendants

Died 4 Jul 1890 at age 65 in Clarketown, Carter, Tennessee, United States

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Biography

James Clark was born in North Carolina.

James Wilburn Clark was born on November 23, 1824 in Burke County, North Carolina and died on July 4,1890 in Clarktown, Carter County, Tennessee. He is the son of Jeremiah Clark and Mary McCall. ^[1].

James married Suzannah Lusk in Ashe County, North Carolina on December 2, 1848. ^[2].

A story of James Wilburn Clark, his wife Suzannah Lusk, and Clarktown, Tennessee comes from the books "The Clark and Tolley Families of Eastern Tennessee and Western North Carolina and Related Families" published in 1994 and "Jeremiah and Alexander Clark of North Carolina" published in 1997. The story follows with the author's (Robert Bradley Clark) permission.

"An article in the January 23, 1977 issue of the Tennessee newspaper the Elizabethton Star told the story of Clarktown [located in Carter County, Tennessee]. The story was told by Charlie Clark, a son of John Clark and Myra Miller, and the writer for the newspaper was Rozella Hardin. The caption under his picture said: 'GREW UP IN CLARKTOWN - Charlie Clark, 81-year-old patient at Ivy Hall Nursing Home, was born and raised in Clarktown. His father, John Clark, was the son of Wilburn Clark, first settler in Clarktown. Clark did carpenter work and farming before becoming disabled several years ago after suffering a stroke.' The article also included another picture with the caption 'LATE MR. AND MRS. NEWTON H. CLARK, parents of Jess Clark of Simerly Creek. Newt was a son of Wilburn Clark, founder of Clarktown, and also helped build the Woodby Hill Baptist Church.' The newspaper story appears below." ^[3]

"FOUNDED BY WILBURN CLARK... CLARKTOWN WAS ONCE BUSTLING COMMUNITY

"Well over 100 years ago Wilburn Clark and his family crossed the mountains from Watauga County, NC to settle their own community - a remote 600-acre tract of mountainous land located between Tiger and Simerly Creeks.

James Clark was a Tennessean.

Thus, was the beginning of Clarktown [located in Carter County, Tennessee], and for three generations, stretching into the forth, it thrived as Wilburn Clark and his sons and grandsons cleared the land of its timber and farmed it. They were also sheepherders.

James Wilburn Clark was a sheep farmer.

Wilburn Clark is now dead as is his ten children and some of his grandchildren. The land is still there, but Clarktown, as such, is no more - only a designated name on the map.

The small community, which was once home for some 39 families, was abandoned when the last family moved out over 20 years ago. Most of the land is now owned by the Forest Service, with some tracts privately owned. In recent years a minnow farm has been operated on part of the land by Pat and Paul Scalf, whose father built ponds and developed the operation on some 200 acres of the tract.

However, Clarktown began losing its personality in the 1930s when its families, one by one, began moving out of the isolated area into more settled and populated communities of Fairview and Simerly Creek.

According to Jess and Charlie Clark, grandsons of Wilburn Clark, it just became too hard to earn a living on the land there, making it necessary to move out.

Charlie, who was born and reared in Clarktown and the son of John Clark, is now 81 years old. A resident of Ivy Hall Nursing Home, he can quite vividly remember when Clarktown was a bustling little community. “We had our own school, which was also used for a church, and my Granddaddy had a grist mill and run a sawmill,” he reminisced. Most of the homes were log structures, however, after the sawmill was built, there were some frame houses constructed.

The only access to the community at that time was by wagon or horse-back, and there wasn’t a store within five miles of the place. “When we wanted to go to the store, we’d throw a saddle over the old horse and take off, and in about an hour we’d be at A.J. Miller’s or Blevins’ Store on Tiger Creek, and if it rained there wasn’t any going at all,” Clark commented, noting that Tiger Creek would become so swollen, there was hardly a shallow enough place to ford it.

A joker and very youthful looking for his age, Charlie recounted the story of how his grandfather supposedly came to settle Clarktown. “He and two brothers came from the old country and landed somewhere around the coast of Virginia or North Carolina. Upon reaching America, they separated and each went their own way, and it is told that two of them settled on the same mountain, one on either side, and did not know it until one of them died,” Charlie laughingly shared.

Charlie was raised in a log house in Clarktown, but moved to Fairview [a nearby community off the mountain] when he married. He recalls that there was one place in Clarktown that as he drove the cow off the mountain each evening, he could look and see smoke rising from 23 chimneys in the settlement.

The old grist mill was operated by water as was Wilburn Clark’s sawmill. Upon the death of Wilburn Clark, his son, Dave, operated the grist mill. The sawmill was never operated anymore, however, a number of outside logging firms have operated in the area.

Both, Charlie and his cousin, Jess, who is a member of the Carter County Soil Conservation Committee, said they had been told that their grandfather bought the 600 acres of land for one dollar an acre.

The patriarch of the family was married to Suzanne Lusk of Vale Cruz, NC, who lived to be 96 years old. Both, she and her husband are buried in the family graveyard in Clarktown.

They were the parents of Harrison, Jim John, Jasper, William, Newton, and Dave Clark and Caroline Byrd, Adelaide Franklin, and Elizabeth Taylor. All lived in Clarktown with the exception of Harrison who remained in Watauga County, NC, when the family moved westward over the mountains.

Caroline’s Husband, Blake Byrd, and Adelaide’s husband, Lum Franklin, made shoes for the clan. “Everybody had sheep, and we sheared them, carded the wool, and spin it into britches and shirts,” Charlie explained in telling how they lived. Also, socks were knit by the women-folks.

Newt [Newton] Clark, father of Jess Clark and one on Wilburn’s sons, moved out of Clarktown early and settled at the head of Simerly Creek across from the Woodby Hill Free Will Baptist Church, which he helped build. He died in the early 1940s, before the church was completed. Jess, a retired builder, still lives at the homeplace.

Charlie recalls that in the spring of 1917 when he was married there was a killing frost on June 17. “All the crops were ruined. The growing season just became so short, we had to move out,” he said.

The remote community which joins the North Carolina line, can be reached by traveling up Tiger Creek or by going through the Iron Mountain Gap..." ^[4]

Children

Children of James and Suzannah Clark:^[5]

• Elizabeth Emaline Clark.
• Ella Caroline Clark.

Sources

1. ↑ U.S., Find A Grave Index, 1600s-Current. Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/39804603/james-wilburn-clark : accessed 14 November 2021), memorial page for James Wilburn Clark (23 Nov 1824–4 Jul 1890), Find A Grave: Memorial #39804603, citing Clark Cemetery, Clarketown, Carter County, Tennessee, USA ; Maintained by TwinA (contributor 46621923) .
2. ↑ "North Carolina, County Marriages, 1762-1979 ," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XF9R-BLB : 22 December 2016), James W Clarke and Susan Lusk, 02 Dec 1848; citing Ashe, North Carolina, United States, p. , North Carolina State Archives Division of Archives and History; FHL microfilm 1,689,110.
3. ↑ Clark, Brad. The Clark and Tolley Families of Eastern Tennessee and Western North Carolina and Related Families. West Des Moines, Iowa: 1994. Page 40.
4. ↑ Clark, Robert Bradley. Jeremiah and Alexander Clark of North Carolina. West Des Moines, Iowa: 1997. Pages 60-61.
5. ↑ Deaths of children:
   • "North Carolina Deaths, 1906-1930," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:F3CD-WS5 : 16 August 2019), James W Clark in entry for Elizabeth Taylor, 09 Feb 1923; citing Watauga Twp, Watauga, North Carolina, reference fn 757 cn 365, State Department of Archives and History, Raleigh; FHL microfilm 1,893,128.
   • "Tennessee Deaths, 1914-1966," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:NSQV-WQN : 26 August 2019), Wilburn Clark in entry for James B Clark, 29 Sep 1942; Death, Carter, Tennessee, United States, Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville.
   • "North Carolina Deaths and Burials, 1898-1994", database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:H42V-21W2 : 21 January 2020), Wilburn Clark in entry for Harrison E. Clark,
   • "Tennessee Deaths, 1914-1966," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:NSNT-TRT : 26 August 2019), Wilburn Clark in entry for Carolyn Byrd, 26 Jul 1937; Death, Carter, Tennessee, United States, Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville.
   • "Tennessee Deaths, 1914-1966," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QPS2-VTKC : 25 August 2019), Wilburn Clark in entry for David Monroe Clark, 13 Oct 1964; Death, Hampton, Carter, Tennessee, United States, Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville.
   • "Tennessee Deaths, 1914-1966," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:NS5N-QWM : 26 August 2019), James Wilburn Clark in entry for William Calvin Clark, 26 Nov 1940; Death, Hampton, Carter, Tennessee, United States, Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville.
   • "Tennessee Deaths, 1914-1966," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:NS3G-R3N : 26 August 2019), Wilburn Clark in entry for Jasper Clark, 17 Dec 1937; Death, Unicoi, Tennessee, United States, Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville.
   • "Tennessee Deaths, 1914-1966," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QKM9-K4RZ : 26 August 2019), J W Clark in entry for John C Clark, 24 Jan 1957; Death, Hampton, Carter, Tennessee, United States, Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville.
   • "North Carolina Deaths, 1906-1930," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:F36M-R6R : 16 August 2019), Wilburn Clarke in entry for Adelade Clarke, 10 Nov 1925; citing Hughes, Linville, Avery, North Carolina, reference 182, State Department of Archives and History, Raleigh; FHL microfilm 1,893,744.

See also:

• 1850 United States Federal Census. Year: 1850; Census Place: Watauga, Watauga, North Carolina; Roll: 648; Page: 122B. https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/13070182:8054

• "United States Census, 1860", database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MDD5-BLS : 19 March 2020), Jas W Clark, 1860.

• "United States Census, 1870", database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MWDW-F5D : 29 May 2021), James W Clark, 1870.

• 1870 United States Federal Census. Year: 1870; Census Place: Watauga, Watauga, North Carolina; Roll: M593_1164; Page: 845B. https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/20105866:7163