William's Parents and Siblings

West Haddon burial record 1840; John and Mary Clarke

William Clarke was the son of John Clarke and Temperance Turland. John and Temperance had seven children, whose names were, in order of oldest to youngest: John (christened 22 June 1834), Ann Maria (christened 10 July 1836), Mary (born in 1839), John (christened 8 August 1841), Mary (29 September 1844), William (26 September 1847) and Thomas (30 June 1850). The first John and Mary died in 1840 within a month of each other (the image on the left shows their burial records). Ann Maria survived and Temperance gave birth to another John and Mary, then to William and Thomas, leaving five children out of seven who grew to adulthood.

All seven of the children in this family were born in West Haddon, Northamptonshire, England and christened in the West Haddon All Saints Church, a building which is still standing today. It even has its own website: http://www.allsaintswesthaddon.org/

Introduction

In this blog I intend to write a bit about my findings on my ancestors, William Clark and Elizabeth Woodward, and their families in England. There is an entire book written about their homesteading adventures in Kansas and their descendants. This blog will focus on the English side of their history and the progress I make in uncovering it.

I will start by telling briefly the story of William Clark. He was born William Clarke in West Haddon, Northamptonshire, England, in September 1847, the youngest of seven children born to John Clarke and Temperance Turland. He sailed to New York from Liverpool on the Oceanic, arriving on July 3, 1871. William was the only member of his family to emigrate from England. He removed the "e" from his last name upon arriving in America. He married Elizabeth Woodward, also an immigrant from England, in Lawrence, Douglas County, Kansas, on February 14, 1873. After living in Lawrence for a few years and bearing a couple of children, they packed up their covered wagon and moved to nearby Osage County, becoming some of the first settlers of the town of Overbrook in that county.