Francis Edward Clark (12 September 1851 – 26 May 1927) was an American clergyman.

Life

Clark was born of

New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the Can ...

ancestry in Aylmer, Quebec, Canada. He was the son of Charles C. Symmes, but took the name of an uncle, the Rev. E.W. Clark, by whom he was adopted after his father's death in 1853. He graduated from

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native ...

in 1873 and from

Andover Theological Seminary Andover Theological Seminary (1807–1965) was a Congregationalist seminary founded in 1807 and originally located in Andover, Massachusetts on the campus of Phillips Academy. From 1908 to 1931, it was located at Harvard University in Cambridge. ...

in 1876, was ordained in the Congregational ministry, and was pastor of the Williston Congregational church at

Portland, Maine Portland is the largest city in the U.S. state of Maine and the seat of Cumberland County. Portland's population was 68,408 in April 2020. The Greater Portland metropolitan area is home to over half a million people, the 104th-largest metropo ...

, from 1876 to 1883, and of the Phillips Congregational church, South

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

, Massachusetts, from 1883 to 1887. On 2 February 1881, he founded in Portland, the Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor, which, beginning as a small society in a single New England church, developed into a great interdenominational organization, which in 1908 had 70,761 societies and more than 3,500,000 members scattered throughout the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, South Africa, India, Japan and China. After 1887, he devoted his time entirely to the extension of this work, and was president of the United Societies of Christian Endeavor and of the World's Christian Endeavor Union, and editor of the ''Christian Endeavor World'' (originally ''The Golden Rule''). Also, he famously visited the

Arcot Mission The Arcot Mission of the Reformed Church in America was located in Arcot, Tamil Nadu, India. The mission was founded by the Scudder family including John Scudder Sr. (1793–1855) in 1851 in order to provide medical help and to proclaim lo ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

. In 1893, Clark spoke at the World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago, delivering the lecture ''Christianity as Seen by a Voyager Around the World''.Barrows, John Henry, ''The World's Parliament of Religions: An Illustrated and Popular Story of the World's First Parliament of Religions, Held in Chicago in connection with the Columbian Exposition of 1893, Volume 2''. Chicago: The Parliament Publishing Company, 1893, 1237-1242. On October 2, 1876, in

Andover, Massachusetts Andover is a town in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. It was settled in 1642 and incorporated in 1646."Andover" in ''The New Encyclopædia Britannica''. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 15th ed., 1992, Vol. 1, p. 387. As of th ...

, he married Harriet E. Clark. His home at 379 Central Street in

Auburndale, Massachusetts Auburndale is one of the thirteen villages within the city of Newton in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It lies at the western end of Newton near the intersection of interstate highways 90 and 95. It is bisected by the Massachu ...

is listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

. He died there on 26 May 1927.

Works

* ''The Children and the Church'' (1882) * ''Looking Out on Life'' (1883) * ''Young Peoples Prayer Meetings'' (1884) * ''Some Christian Endeavor Saints'' (1889) * ''Mossback Correspondence'' (1889) * ''World Wide Endeavor'' (1895) * ''Our Journey Around the World'' (with Harriet E. Clark) (1895) * ''A New Way Round an Old World'' (1900) about his journey on the newly opened Trans-Siberian Railroad.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Clark, Francis Edward 1851 births 1927 deaths 19th-century American writers American Congregationalist ministers Congregationalist writers Writers from Gatineau

Life

Works

References

Further reading

External links