Ancestors

Barnabas Clark

Barnabas Clark was born at Harwich, on Cape Cod, on 9 March 1743, the seventh of fourteen children of Capt. Scotto Clark, a Harwich master mariner, and Thankful Crosby. Nine of the eleven sons in that house became whalemen, hunting from open boats launched off the Cape shore.

In October 1769 he entered his intention to marry Mehitable Hall of Yarmouth. The Rev. Nathaniel Stone married them on 21 December 1769. They lived in the North Parish of Harwich, which is now Brewster, and had their children baptized in its church. Alvan, entered as Elvin, was baptized in October 1771. Daniel followed in 1773, Joshua in 1776, Barnabas in 1779 and Hitty in 1781. Tully, born in 1784, was baptized privately and, the minister wrote, "died ye next Day." Thankful was born in 1787 and lived two years. Atherton was baptized in July 1789.

In the Revolution Barnabas served as a sergeant in Capt. Benjamin Berry's Harwich company. It belonged to Maj. Zenas Winslow's regiment, and Zenas Winslow was married to Barnabas's sister Abigail. In September 1778 the British raided New Bedford and Fairhaven. The company marched on the alarm and served seven days.

In 1797, at fifty-four, he moved the family to Westminster, in the Connecticut River valley of Vermont. His brother Scotto went too. A family account says the two families made the journey by ox cart and that it took fourteen days.

Mehitable died at Westminster in March 1812. Barnabas died there on 12 December 1831, aged eighty-eight. They are buried in the Westminster West Cemetery. His son Barnabas married Hannah Gorham, whose family had come from Yarmouth in 1788. His son Atherton became a physician. He studied medicine with the father of the poet William Cullen Bryant and practiced at Ashfield, Cummington and Easthampton, Massachusetts.

Barnabas was twenty-three when his brother Tully was killed by a sperm whale near George's Bank in 1766. Three other brothers, William, Joshua and Fessenden, were lost at sea. He named his own son Tully in 1784.

If Barnabas Clark is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "Barnabas Clark (1743-1831)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/barnabas-clark-1743-1831-16aed6.