Interesting Family Facts and Notable Relatives
The present members of the Clarke family, descended from James Clarke, can track their ancestory and relations through the following notable people:
- James Clarke, rumoured to be a guard for Queen Victoria, possibly as a Foot Guard in the 65th Regiment.
- Annie Matilda Clark Arniel, a suffragist in Wilmington, Delaware, chained herself along with others to the White House gates in Washington, D.C. for the Women's Party. She served time in the White House as a result of this.
Through Clarke marriages, these people also come into the family tree of John William Clarke, son of James Clarke, and Matthew Clark, grandson of James Clarke:
- The Vermont Green Mountain Boys, through William Allen, great great grandfather of Eileen Truesdell.
- Caroline Ingalls of the original family of Little House on the Prairie, through Mary Jane Van Alstyne, great great grandmother of Eileen Truesdell.
- Captain George Hunt, through Ann Hunt Cadue (first cousins), great grandmother of Eileen Truesdell. Captain Hunt lived in Huntsville, Ont., which was named after its first white settler.
- George Selkirk, through Elizabeth (Bessie) Hunt Selkirk, sister of Eileen Truesdell's great grandmother. George was the grandson of Elizabeth and was a baseball player and manager of the New York Yankees. George was the man who replaced Babe Ruth in right field when Ruth retired from baseball and inherited Ruth's jersey number 3.
The descendents of Matthew Clark (b. 1904, d. 1986) no longer spell their surname with the 'e'. Matthew unknowingly dropped the 'e' from the name due to the way records were kept at the time. Hence the reference sometimes made in the site to the Clark(e) family.