Correspondence and ephemera collected by Ethan Ray Clarke, a Rhode Island Civil War regimental chaplain and small-town minister in New York and Michigan, with the bulk of material representative of the period from 1860 to 1880.
Ethan Ray Clarke Correspondence and Ephemera, 1822-1930 (MSS 685)
Extent: 0.2 Linear feet (1 archives box)
Ethan Ray Clarke born on January 10, 1818, at Potowomut, Rhode Island, to an original Rhode Island settler's family. Clarke was the second surviving son of the ten children of Ray Clarke (1782 - 1847) and Celia Greene (1776 - 1829 - a descendent of the Revolutionary war hero, Nathaniel Greene.) Clarke was educated at Jamaica Plains, Massachusetts, and inherited property from his grandfather, including a farm in Oxford, New York. He married Mary Elizabeth Millard, of Rhode Island, on October 29, 1840, and they moved to Oxford. He entered into the ministry in 1851 and became the first pastor of the newly erected Oxford Free Will Baptist church. His children included Susan Celia (Mrs. William E. Marwin), Anna Augusta (Mrs. James P. Boyd), Isabella Emily (Mrs. Arthur M. Mayhew), Mary Elizabeth (Mrs. William J. Rose), George Brayton Clarke (married Florence J. Holley), and Ward Greene Clark (physician and professor of dental surgery at Rush University, Chicago). Two children, Jessie (aged 15) and Ray (aged 10), died in 1864 and 1865 respectively.
During the United States Civil War, the forty-five year old Clarke served as one of only 930 regimental chaplains. He was commissioned (1863 - 1865) with the 1st Regiment of the Rhode Island Cavalry and later served with the 25th New York Cavalry. He witnessed many famous battles including Chancellorsville and Rapidau Station (1863); the White House on the York River, Shenandoah Valley; and Charleston battles (1864). After the war, he returned to Oxford and continued his work as a pastor.
In 1870, Clarke accepted an offer to become a pastor in Michigan and spent most of his remaining years in village churches (New Haven, Mt. Clemens, Tekonsha) in south-eastern and south-central Michigan. The 1880 census reported him as a sixty-two year old Baptist preacher living in Burr Oak along with his wife, his son, Ward, his daughter, Isabella (then a widow) and an eleven year-old grandson, George C. Rose (born 1869). The date of his death and burial are uncertain.
The Ethan Ray Clarke Correspondence and Ephemera collection provides a small glimpse into the life of a Civil War chaplain and small-town minister and is a mix of correspondence to Clarke as well as miscellaneous writings, certificates, flyers, train tickets, and other items that Clarke collected during his lifetime. The collection is arranged in two series: 1) CORRESPONDENCE, and 2) EPHEMERA.