Daniel Clark Sr.

Daniel Clark Sr. (1732–July 16, 1800) was an 18th-century Irish-American merchant and land owner in colonial Pennsylvania and the lower Mississippi River valley. Clark dealt in groceries, tobacco, and slaves. His nephew, Daniel Clark, left Ireland to join him in business and eventually became an important political figure of Louisiana at the turn of the 19th century. Clark had a business partnership with James Wilkinson, who was both an American general and an employee of the Spanish government. The now-extinct Natchez District town of Clarksville was developed by and named for Clark.

Migration, military service, and early career

Clark was originally from County Sligo, Ireland. He came to the British colonies in North America in the 1750s, initially settling in Pennsylvania. He served as a lieutenant of the British army in Major James Burd's company of the Third Battalion at Fort Augusta in 1756–57. In 1758 Daniel Clark married Jane Hoops, a daughter of Adam Hoops. Hoops was considered a "one-man financial institution" in colonial Pennsylvania, lending large sums of money to business affiliates. Clark initially worked for his father-in-law in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The Clarks moved to Philadelphia in 1761. In Philadelphia Clark initially opened a store, advertising that he had "to sell, for Cash or short Credit, at the Store lately occupied by Messieurs Standley and Fullton, a Neat Assortment of dry Goods, which he imported in the last Vessels from London and Liverpool." He dealt in furniture, china, and leather. Clark continued to send ships back and forth between Europe and North America "throughout the early 1760s."

Hoops supported his son-in-law financially in many ways, giving him seed money for investments, acting as a silent partner, and by "bailing him out" when Clark's investments failed to provide the anticipated return. Among Clark's enterprises was ownership of the 90-ton ship ''Jenny'' and partial ownership of the brigantine ''Sally''. From 1762 to 1770, Hoops served as an underwriter on a series of marine insurance policies for Clark.

Clark's interest in the lower Mississippi River valley began around 1765, when he traveled to British West Florida to look at land he had been granted as a reward for his service in the French and Indian War. He had been awarded 3,000 acres in the Natchez District. While he was in West Florida during this period he served as assistant to the governor in Mobile for a while, and "clerk of the council of West Florida" at Pensacola.

He received other West Florida land grants, on January 15, 1768, including 1,000 acres near the Natchez fort, which James McIntosh owned later, another tract of 2,000, that later became the property of James Dallas, 1,000 acres on Lake Maurepas, and 500 acres near Fort Bute.

Daniel Clark returned to Philadelphia from west Florida in late 1768 or early 1769. In 1769 Hoops granted Clark property in Carlisle, and Cumberland County, and gave him about £1,000, and in his 1771 will, Hoops mentioned how he had helped out Clark "before he failed." Hoops also gave his daughter and son-in-law "on an estate in Lower Makefield Township in Bucks County which he bought at a sheriff's sale." Clark sold that estate in 1773 to move to Natchez territory.

During the American Revolutionary War, Clark supported the Continentals, encouraged "the Spanish conquest of Natchez district," and gave large sums of money to Oliver Pollock "to cover bills incurred by the Continental Congress." Working out of Philadelphia and Virginia during the war, Clark was agent for the tobacco business of financier Robert Morris. In 1784 or 1785 he went back to the Natchez District and New Orleans, where he traded in manufactured goods, groceries, and slaves. As was common for Anglo-American merchants of the era, one of his key roles was dealing with "Spanish subjects to facilitate their trading ventures."

Post-Revolutionary War career

In the 1780s he encouraged his nephew and namesake Daniel Clark to come to New Orleans to work in the business. The younger Clark arrived in 1786, and started out as a clerk for the firm of Clark & Rees in New Orleans. Clark's business partner at that time was Ebenezer Rees. The Spanish Governor, Esteban Rodríguez Miró, then hired him to work as a secretary and English interpreter "a role that provided his uncle the duty-free import of 'a cargo of negroes, cattle, tobacco, flour, bacon, lard, and apples.'" Meanwhile, the elder Clark was appointed to be an ''alcalde'' (Spanish municipal magistrate), and began racking up land acquisitions, including 565 acres on Second Creek, and 1,020 acres on the Mississippi, both in 1787, 1,000 acres in what is now Wilkinson County, Mississippi in 1789, 600 acres on the Mississippi in 1793, and 5,800 acres at Bayou Sara in 1794. Throughout this period, Clark "bought and sold lands by the thousands of acres in various parts of the district." Clark also owned ships that brought slaves to the New Orleans slave market in the 1780s and 1790s. He was, in part, a "re-exporter," bringing slaves from the Caribbean rather than directly from Africa; for instance in 1786, Clark imported and resold 170 people shipped from Kingston, British colonial Jamaica.

Clark also became business partners with James Wilkinson, who was both a general in the American army and a spy on the payroll of the Spanish, and together they were important advisers to governor Miró. Wilkinson had arrived in New Orleans in 1787, been introduced to Governor Miró, swore his allegiance to Spain, and Clark had become his "agent." Together Clark and Wilkinson "encouraged the Louisiana–Kentucky trade by subsidies" and simultaneously initiated a local "tobacco crisis." Their methods were improper: "In August 1788 Wilkinson, Clark Sr., and Isaac Dunn signed 'Articles of Agreement' to foster a three-way trade involving merchandise imported from Philadelphia, western raw materials, and Louisiana specieall completely illegal according to Spanish policy. In a letter written two months earlier, Colonel Clark had carefully explained the methods (judicious bribery, loopholes in mercantile policy) by which these products could be smuggled into and out of New Orleans." Wilkinson (and Clark) had a monopoly on "selling Kentucky produce in the Louisiana metropolis," which ultimately failed due to the "opposition by the rank-and-file" of settlers. Nonetheless, Clark and Wilkinson's trading firm in operation 1787 to 1791 "proved less rewarding than anticipated." The details of the failure are not well understood but the "alliance ended with General Wilkinson owing the elder Clark a goodly sum of money thus suggesting that the fault lay with Wilkinson." Historians have called this the Spanish Conspiracy, or alternatively, the Wilkinson Conspiracy.

During the period of political instability in 1797 that preceded the eventual transfer of the Natchez District to the United States, local residents created competing committees supporting different political factions. The first, which was created in July 1797 and was generally composed of merchants who supported the views of Andrew Ellicott, was known as the Committee of Safety and consisted of Gabriel Benoist, Joseph Bernard, Peter Bryan Bruin, Daniel Clark Sr., Robert Dixon, Philander Smith, Isaac Gaillard, and Frederick Kimball. The committee organized in September 1797, which was composed largely of plantation owners and "debtors" and was loyal to adventurer Anthony Hutchins, consisted of Abner Green, Thomas Green Sr., Chester Ashley, Daniel Burnet, Landon Davis, Justice King, Dr. John Shaw, and James Stuart. When the Natchez District became the Mississippi Territory of the United States, Clark was one of the "men of means" who aligned himself with the Federalist Party generally and territorial governor Winthrop Sargent specifically. Sargent rewarded him by appointing him commander of the militia of Adams County, Mississippi Territory (the southern half of the Natchez District, contra Pickering County), and senior justice of the courts of quarter sessions and common pleas. Clark's plantation in this section was just north of the international boundary, and this was eventually surveyed and mapped as the settlement of Clarksville, and was where Louisiana governor Baron Carondelet "first proposed the boundary commission should meet."

By 1798 Daniel Clark Sr. was semi-retired from the groceries, tobacco, and slaves business, leaving his nephew to manage things. He was heavily indebted as well, so his expenses were paid from an annuity arranged by his nephew. Daniel Clark Sr. died of a fever in 1800. His widow, Jane Hoops Clark, left the lower Mississippi and returned to her family in Philadelphia; she died there in 1812.

Citations

Sources

*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

Further reading

*
*

{{DEFAULTSORT:Clark, Daniel Sr.

1732 births
1800 deaths
18th-century American merchants
18th-century American slave traders
Businesspeople from County Sligo
Businesspeople from Pennsylvania
People from Wilkinson County, Mississippi