Past and Present - The Clark Family of Greene and Otsego Counties

UPSTATE, NEW YORK — The charming waterfront community of Athens was once known for the export of red bricks, harvesting ice, and shipbuilding. But did you know that it was also the root of descent for one of the most compelling Americana families of the northeast, the Clark family? It all started when Nathaniel Clark (1787-1880) and his brother-in-law Thomas Howe started a pottery on Market Street in 1807 called “Howe and Clark” that would go on to create some of the most sought after ceramics in the world for nearly 100 years. These invaluable period pieces are kept by some of Athen’s older families as precious heirlooms while others are kept on display to this day for all to see by the Greene County Historical Society’s Bronck Museum and Vedder Research Library in Coxsackie, or at the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown. 

“I would say the lasting evidence of the pottery is in the types of things it helped facilitate.” says Greene County Historian and longtime Athens native Jonathan Palmer. 

“ Nathan Clark was a public official in the village for years as well as a justice of the peace.” 

“Businessmen of that time were the kind of people folks went to in order to secure small loans, seek contributions for community events, and to fill boards for community organizations” Palmer continues. “The income and revenue Clark drew from the pottery enabled him to engage in civic roles outside the context of the pottery.” “Perhaps the most tangible survivor of this is Mount Home Cemetery, which was formed from land Clark donated and on whose board Clark sat for years when it was first organized”.

After Howe’s passing in 1813, Nathaniel would go to Howe’s wife and buy out his sister's share of the company, changing the name temporarily to  “N. Clark”, and eventually N. Clark and Company. Nathaniel then brought on a new business partner, Ethan Fox, which shifted the company's name again, this time to “Clark and Fox of Athens”. Fox would eventually buy out Nathaniel’s share and the company would simply become “E.S. Fox” for five years before being sold back to Clark again. Nathaniel's son, Nathaniel Clark Jr would buy the company out from his father within 24 hours of him recovering it and operated it for the next 47 years as “N. Clark Jr.”. Next, the business would change hands to Thomas Ryan in 1890 and spend the following 10 years as “Athens Pottery”. With the business changing leadership multiple times, different company stamps on the pots would be used depending on who was in charge, and to a collector this can be everything when trying to ascertain the age and value of these timeless wares.

The pottery business Nathaniel Clark started in Athens was said by one writer to possess the most substantial production and employment rate in the Empire state, with branches springing up as far away as Rochester. 

With this burgeoning success it was not long before Nathaniel Jr would take a wife, Julia and the two had a son Edward Cabot Clark (1811-1882). Edward was tutored in Athens until the age of 12, then attended academy in Lennox, Massachusetts for four years, and finished his education at Williams College, graduating in 1830. Edward would return home soon after and find employment across the river in the city of Hudson at the law firm of Ambrose L. Jordan as a straight-laced lawyer. He wed Jordan’s daughter Caroline in 1835 and reestablished the firm with his father in law as “Jordan and Clark”, in New York City where he would come to meet Isaac Merrit Singer (1811-1875).

Singer was a brilliant and creative tinkerer who spent much of his time working in tool shops. He would seek Clark’s legal help when procuring patents for his inventions like carving type or perhaps better still, the Singer Sewing Machine. Summoned to Boston in 1850 to repair  a sewing machine made by the Lerow & Blogett Company, Singer instead improved upon the design resulting in a device more practical than hand sewing. Up to 900 stitches per minute was considered a dramatic improvement over an accomplished seamstress’s 40 stitches per minute and so Clark was swift to draw up the patent for what the future would hold as the electronic sewing machine and the I.M. Singer Company was born. 

With Singer's analytical brains and Clarks legal and financial backing, enough patents could be consolidated to begin mass production by 1860 making the two the biggest manufacturers of sewing machines in the world. Success followed but in 1875 Singer died, leaving Clark as the sole President of the company, their last project together being the “New Family” sewing machine which was retailed for $30 cash or $40 in an installment plan making it the first affordable machine to the masses. Clark would use some of his new gains to purchase property to serve as his county summer home “Fernleigh” in 1856 (construction on the property did not commence until 1869)on the shores of Otsego Lake in Cooperstown while investing in other real estate around New York, the most well known being the Dakota Building on Central Park West in Manhattan. Many remember this site for John Lennon’s demise by gunshot in December of 1980, this beautiful German Renaissance building constructed between 1880-1884, is registered as a historic landmark and is the product of the architect Henry J. Hardenbergh. Hardenbergh auditioned for the task of the Dakotas construction by erecting the Kingfisher Tower for Edward Clark in 1875, that still stands on the Glimmerglass Shores of Otsego Lake today. “It’s really an architectural folly, so it doesn't serve a functional purpose, it's meant to give the lake a sense of antiquity and picturesque quality” says Paul D”Ambrosio,  CEO of both the Fenimore Art Museum and the Farmers Museum in Cooperstown, who was nice enough to speak to me today about Edward Clarks grandsons by his son Alfred, Stephen and Robert Sterling Clark. 

“Sterling was the founder of the Clark Art Institute, while Stephen is our patron who founded all the museums as well as the Baseball Hall of Fame here in Cooperstown.” Paul states. 

“He also was a founding trustee of MoMa in NY and a big patron of Yale University and the Metropolitan Museum of Art among others.”

Today the Clark family still continues to make progressive strides through the Clark Foundation, which is one of the most charitable foundations in the United States. Jane Forbes Clark (Nathaniel Clarks descendant) is the current President of the Clark Foundation, Chairman of the Board of Directors for the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Chairman of the Basset Medical Center,  and Director of the Bassett Healthcare Network, where just last April of 2024 she announced a grant for $6 million to underwrite the creation of a new children's daycare facility on the Bassett Medical Centers campus donated by the Clark Family Foundation.  I reached out to Miss Clark for a statement on what being from a family that has accomplished so much in 216 years and is still going strong today is like.”I have always had an enormous respect for the legacy that many generations of my family have built; particularly, in the sphere of art and museums, and preservation and conservation.” Jane says.  “It has always been my commitment to continue to keep the Clark family's legacy, not only relevant, but continuing to be extremely beneficial.” 

Very special thanks to David Dorpfeld, Former Greene County Historian for his research I have cited and used here on the Clark family’s history in Athens from his article “A Stitch In Time: The Athens Thread” posted in the Fall of 2018 issue of “Catskill Tri-County Historical Views.”