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J.C. Clark, Jr.
(1825 - 1906)
Home State: New Jersey
Education: US Military Academy, West Point, NY, Class of 1848;Class Rank: 9th
Command Billet: Battery Commander
Branch of Service: Artillery
Before Antietam
After graduating from West Point he was breveted 2nd Lieutenant in the 3rd United States Artillery on 1 July 1848. He was commissioned 2nd Lieutenant in the 4th US Artillery on 6 January 1849, was promoted to First Lieutenant on 11 December 1850, and to Captain on 14 May 1861, having served on garrison duty all over the country and as Mathematics instructor at West Point. He first saw combat at Winchester, in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, in March 1862.
On the Campaign
He commanded his battery on the Maryland Campaign. Brigade commander Nagle, in his after-action report noted:
"... I cannot refrain, however, from speaking of Captain Clark, of Battery E, Fourth Artillery, who did excellent service, and received four wounds during the day [at Antietam]."Clark was wounded in three places in the leg and one in the hand by shrapnel from an exploding artillery shell.
The rest of the War
After at least 8 months of recovery he was found medically unfit for field service and was detailed as an assistant professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy at West Point in August 1863. He retired from the Regular Army on 11 May 1864 with rank of Major (to date from 28 July 1866), but remained as an instructor at the Academy. He was honored by brevets to Major and Lieutenant Colonel, USA, respectively, for his actions in the Shenandoah Valley and at Antietam.
After the War
He was at West Point until 1870, then taught military science at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia from 1874-75. From 1876 to 1878 he was Deputy Governor of the Soldiers' Home in Washington, DC. He was author of A Manual of Heavy Artillery Service (1880) - a West Point textbook.
References & notes
Service details from Heitman1 and Cullum.2 Clark's Cullum number is 1377. The image above from a CDV sent us by Vern DeLong, likely taken prior to Antietam. Mr DeLong also provided us a later image in which Clark sports a cane and Colonel's eagles. His gravesite is on Findagrave.
More on the Web
See his headstone from a Clark Family site. For much more about Clark's service via letters Mr DeLong has brought to light, see this Deseret News article online (2009).
Birth
11/28/1825; Mount Holly, NJ
Death
04/03/1906; Philadalphia, PA; burial in Saint Andrew's Graveyard, Mount Holly, NJ
1 Heitman, Francis Bernard, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army 1789-1903, 2 volumes, Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 1903, pg. 305 [AotW citation 114]
2 Cullum, George Washington, Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the US Military Academy, 2nd Edition, 3 vols., New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1868-79, Vol. II, pg. 349 [AotW citation 26368]
