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First Posted: 4/1/2013
“Digging up information is fun,” said local historian and vice chairman of the 2012 Clarks Summit Centennial, Dennis Martin.
“I also do crossword puzzles.”
“Finding pieces that fit together is a great hobby. When you can put two different pieces (of the puzzle) together, it’s really interesting. They’re not my family, but there are interesting stories. Maybe this is making up for the fact that I’d like to know more about my own family,” said Martin.
He began doing research for the centennial by looking for information regarding Clarks Summit and Clarks Green pioneer, Deacon William Clark.
Interesting information he found includes “when we began doing research for the centennial, I started looking for information about William Clark and I kept getting contradictory information. He came here almost over a ten -year period for the first time. ”
Volumes of information in binders, the fruits of Martin’s labor, can be found in the “Local History” section at the Abington Community Library, and each story is the culmination of many hours of research by Martin and his wife, Sharleen, who transcribes information from her husband’s oral interviews.
Recently, Martin completed an essay, “Deacon William Clark First Settler,” which is a joint project of the Abington Community Library and the Lackawanna Historical Society, with financial support from the Clark’s Summit Centennial Committee. Dennis and Sharleen Martin have been active in all three groups and are informally designated as “Library’s Historians.”
“I was interested in trying to figure out the real story,” Martin said, and through his research revealed some facts about William Clark and his family. For example, he was able to uncover the way the local area existed when white men first arrived.
“When William Clark came here the first time, he came with two of his sons, and Ephraim Leach and Thomas Smith. They came over on what is known as “The Morgan Highway,” because they couldn’t get a horse through the notch. It was an Indian trail and with the trees growing up next to it, they couldn’t get their horse through it,” he said.
“They got here in the spring of the year, in time for maple syrup season, because it was a cash crop they could trade for other things. And during that year, the three men actually spent a month apiece in the notch cutting trees to make the notch passable by wagon. The next year, William Clark brought the rest of his family back, which was a total of six sons and a daughter. Here, he and his wife had two more daughters.”
Martin also discovered that once William Clark came here, there was a flood of people who came afterward.
“Two to three years later, they were forming a Baptist church and that takes quite a few people. Once it came time to settle this area, there was an awful lot of settling.”
One of the many facts he uncovered: When conducting research, census records can be deceiving.
“When I first looked up William Clark on Ancestry.com, I found out he owned a slave,” Martin said.
But did he actually own a slave?
Martin said, “No. But in the 1800 census, only the second census, they actually had categories of people, i.e., males of a certain age, females of a certain age…and slave. They had to count slaves and there were slaves in Pennsylvania at the time. Somebody saw the hash mark “1” for adult woman and transcribed it as “1” for slave. So, Mary Clark (Deacon William Clark’s wife) was not counted as an adult woman. She was counted as a slave. But on Ancestry.com, basically someone was careless…You had to count slaves because the Constitution required it… You run across a lot of problems like that and you have to look at the original documents and say, ‘Well…”
For all intents and purposes the William Clark essay housed in the library is complete, but research is an ongoing process. Martin said, “The essay is complete unless I run across additional information.”
And Martin, always with a history project in the works, said, “I’d get some information and put it aside with questions I had, and then do more research. I always have things in progress… Eventually I will do a story about William Clark’s son, Jeremiah Clark, because he was one of the people who really got the place going. He helped build a turnpike.”
For more information regarding William Clark and other historical documents, visit the Abington Community Library Local History Section. The library is located at 1200 West Grove Street, South Abington Township.