CLARKE 225 CLARKE It must have been one of the earliest por- traits in oils made in America. Walter L. Burr age. A Biographical Diet, of the First Settlers of New England, J. Savage, 1860. A Genealog. Register of the First Settlers of New England, John Farmer, 1829. Amer. Med. Biog., James Thacher, M.D., 1828. Americana, February, 1911, p. 143, The Scot in New England, John Calder Gordon. A Genealogical Statement of the Clarke Family of Boston, Mass., 1731; with a review of the same by Isaac J. Greenwood, N. Y., 1879. History of Newbury, Newburyport, and West New- bury, from 1635 to 1845. Joshua Coffin, Boston, 1845. Clarke, Almon (1840-1904) Almon Clarke was born in Granville, Ver- mont, October 13, 1840. When he was three years old his parents removed to Rochester, where he attended local schools, was a teacher himself when fifteen, and at nineteen read medicine with the noted Huntingtons, who continuously pradtised in Rochester for a hundred years. He attended lectures at Castle- ton, Vt, and lastly at Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he graduated in 1862. Returning to Vermont, Dr. Clarke began practice near Montpelier. The country was then astir with the excitement of war, and in August, 1862, Dr. Clarke found himself in camp at Brattle- boro, as assistant surgeon of the tenth Ver- mont Infantry Volunteers. When the army was reorganized, Dr. Clarke's regiment was reorganized, his regiment was transferred to the first brigade, third division, sixth corps. In this famous corps commanded by Sedgwick, and afterward by Wright, he served through the great battles of The Wilderness, Spottsyl- vania, North Anna, Cold Harbor, many of the fierce struggles before Petersburg (notably the last one, in which Richmond and Peters- burg were captured). Sailor's Creek, Win- chester, Fisher's Hill and Cedar Creek. While in Burksville Dr. Clarke received his commission as surgeon of the first Vermont Cavalry. In April, 1866, he settled in Sheboygan County. Wisconsin. The roads were rough, the weather exposure severe in day and night service, and he found that his physi- cal powers, somewhat impaired by army life, were not equal to the large demands that were made upon him, but he struggled on doing the best he could. For thirteen years he was physician to the County Insane Asylum. In 1877 he was employed by the Pension Bureau to do special work in four different states. He worked in Sheboygan until 189S, when he was appointed, by Gen. Franklin, surgeon of the Northwest Branch of the National Sol- diers' Home. In 1868 Dr. Clarke married Emma Josephine Adams .who survived him. They had no chil- dren. During the last years of his life he spent his winters in the south and his death (from dysentery) occurred there, but his body was taken to Sheboygan. Emma J. Clarke. Clarke, Edward Hammond (1820-1877). Edward Hammond Clarke, physician, was born in Norton, Massachusetts, February 2, 1820, the ninth and youngest child of the Rev. Pitt Clarke, a Congregational minister of Norton, descended from one of the early col- onists who came from England and settled in the north of Wrentham. His mother, Mary Jones Stimson, his father's second wife, was very fond of literature and wrote many poems. Some of those preserved show, as Dr. O. W. Holmes says, a cultivated taste as well as warm affections. On the death of Pitt Clarke his widow moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Edward was fitted for Harvard College, en- tering with the class of 1840. An attack of hemorrhage from the lungs when he was in his junior year compelled him to give up study, and this same weak health proved a hindrance for some years. He graduated in 1841. With it all he was buoyant and optimistic in temperament and took up the study of medicine in Philadelphia because of the less harsh climate of that city. The M. D. was conferred upon him by the University of Pennsylvania in 1846. Upon graduation he accepted an offer to travel in Europe. Here he began the study of otology, a specialty to which he devoted himself in the early years of practice. Upon establishing himself in Boston he soon assumed a prominent posi- tion. His health was much improved though never rugged. He is described by Dr. Holmes as having "all the qualities that go to the mak- ing of a master in the art of healing; science enough, but not so much in the shape of minute, unprofitable acquisition as to make him near-sighted; very great industry; love of his profession and entire concentration of his faculties upon it." In 18SS he was chosen professor of materia medica in the Medical School of Harvard University, succeeding the distinguished Jacob Bigelow. This office he resigned in 1872 and was chosen a member of its board of overseers. He continued in active practice until assailed by cancer of the intestine, of which he died November 30, 1877, after three years of almost constant suf- fering borne with extraordinary fortitude.
