John Clark

Son of noted civil engineer George Clark (1797-1875), John was in construction with his father on railroad and water projects in Canada (where he met and married his wife), and in Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts. He later served a term as a Philadelphia Councilman and was on the Philadelphia Stock Exchange. In 1860 he was a prosperous 38 year old stockbroker living in the Griffith (later Griffith-Peale) House in the Holmesburg section of Philadelphia.

He enrolled there on 31 May 1861 and mustered in Harrisburg on 28 July as Captain of Company E, 3rd Pennsylvania Reserve Infantry - a Philadelphia company known formerly as the "DeSilver Greys." He was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel of the regiment on 1 August 1862.

He commanded the Third Reserves in Maryland in relief of Colonel Horatio Sickel, who went on sick leave on 1 September 1862. He led them on South Mountain on 14 September and at Antietam on 16/17 September 1862, where he received a "painful but not severe wound to the index finger of his right hand, being broken by a piece of shell which exploded near him."

By the end of 1862 he was detailed to work on US Military Railroads and was on that duty until mustered out with his regiment on 17 June 1864.

He returned to Philadelphia and was elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in 1867 and reelected the following year. He was elected Speaker of that House in 1869. He was again a railroad construction engineer to his death at age 49 in 1872 of haematemisis - acute gastrointestinal bleeding.

His service from Sypher,1 Bates,2 and the Card File.3 His command in place of Colonel Sickel from Nicholas.4 The wound detail quoted above from the Loyal Legion Historical Journal (Summer 2022). Personal details from family genealogists, the US Census of 1860 & 1870, a bio sketch from a Crispin family genealogy of unknown provenance, and his Pennsylvania House Biography. His gravesite is on Findagrave, source also of his picture, from a photograph shared by Britt Isenberg. Thanks to Jim Smith for the poke to look further into Clark.

He married Elizabeth Murphy Stephenson (1827-1903) in Ontario, Canada in September 1847 and they had a son George Stephenson Clark (1850-1923); a lawyer, he married Sarah Frances Crispin in 1875 and was a member of the Pennsylvania House like his father. He made a speech at Antietam on 17 September 1906 on the occasion of the dedication of the 3rd Reserves' monument on the battlefield.

There is another wartime portrait of him in Alexander F Nicholas' Second Brigade of the Pennsylvania Reserves at Antietam (1908), online from the Hathi Trust.

11/30/1822; Philadelphia, PA

05/30/1872; Holmesburg, PA; burial in Emmanuel Resurrection Episcopal Church Cemetery, Holmesburg, PA