♂Daniel Clark

Daniel Clark (died about 1690) was an early settler of Ipswich and then of Topsfield, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W, where he kept a tavern in his house. He was the ninth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Sarah Clark (1651–1717).

Ipswich and Topsfield

A Maine family history published in 1909 records that the town of Ipswich granted him land on 29 December 1634, and that in 1648 he was on a list of Ipswich inhabitants who paid toward the fund for Major Daniel Denison^W, the town’s military leader. A history of Topsfield published in 1940 places him in Ipswich by 1636. The 1909 history has him probably living by about 1650 in the New Meadows, the part of Ipswich that was set off as the town of Topsfield that year.

The same history of Topsfield traces his dealings in land there. In 1652 William Paine sued him over a farm Clark had bought from him and not paid for; the matter seems to have been settled, since Clark went on to sell parts of it. He sold a house and twenty-six acres to a man named Uselton before 1658, and in 1663 he sold one hundred acres, with a house and other buildings near Mile Brook, to William Averill. He kept servants: one of them, Andrew Creeke, died in 1658 owing his master “Daniell Clarke” eleven shillings from the reckoning of his last year’s wages.

The tavern

Both histories make him an innkeeper, licensed to keep an ordinary at Topsfield. The 1940 history makes him probably the town’s first, with a licence in 1660; the 1909 family history dates the licence to 1669, “for selling beer and victuals”, and has it renewed up to 1681. The 1940 history records that in 1678 he was summoned to the court at Ipswich for selling strong drink to an Indian. John How and Peter Shumway testified that they had seen “Jeremiah Indian, the tinker come from Daniel Clarke’s so disguised with drink that he could not goe”. Clark answered that he had let the man have one gill and no more, and that cider, cake and small beer had done the rest; he owned it to be true and was fined. The same history notes that the General Court had ordered that no one should sell strong drink to an Indian.

The 1909 history adds that he took the oath of allegiance as an inhabitant of Topsfield in 1677 and 1678, and that the town records of March 1676/77 call him “goodman” Clarke, a term of respect^W. It gives his admission to the church as 27 February 1686. The list of members admitted during the pastorate of the Reverend Joseph Capen, which the 1940 history prints, enters him as “Daniell Clarke Senr (dead)”.

Family and death

The printed records of the Essex County quarterly courts copy the entries for six children born at Topsfield between 1645 and 1657, Sarah among them. The 1909 history counts eleven children in all, by his wife Mary, among them sons named John, Daniel, Humphrey and Samuel. His daughter Sarah married Samuel Howlett, the Topsfield blacksmith, in 1670/71.

His wife was Mary Beane, a Londoner baptized at the church of St Katherine Coleman^W in 1624/25. On 2 March 1639/40 her father took out a licence for her to marry Daniel Clark, a carpenter and bachelor of the parish of St Botolph Bishopsgate, and they were married at St Katherine Coleman the next day. A Humphrey Beane kept up the tie from London: in 1670 he wrote to his “Brother and Sister Clarke” at Topsfield that he was keeping their son Samuel at school.

The 1909 history dates his will, filed at Salem, after his wife’s death, which fell before 10 January 1688/89, and has him dead before 25 March 1690. The will, it says, names his sons, with Samuel then in England, and grandchildren, some of them by the name of Howlett.

Notes

The identification of his wife with Mary Beane of London comes from Walter Goodwin Davis’s The Ancestry of Dudley Wildes (1959), from the marriage licence and Humphrey Beane’s letter. A genealogy of the Wildes family, published by the Topsfield Historical Society, calls her Mary (Newbury) Clark; the 1940 history of Topsfield holds that he could not have been the Daniel Clark who married Mary Newberry of Dorchester in 1644 and settled at Windsor, in Connecticut.

The licence of 1639/40 describes the groom as a carpenter of St Botolph Bishopsgate, in London. The land grant at Ipswich in 1634, and his presence there by 1636, as the two histories give them, sit awkwardly with that, and neither history mentions the London marriage.