CLARKE, John [869] ¹

  General Notes:

From The Cocks....Genealogy of Long Island, by George William Cocks: CLARKE LINEAGE :
b. 1609. John Fiske in his "Beginnings of New England", gives his portrait and says of him:
"John Clarke, one of the worthiest and most highminded among the founders of New England, was born in Suffolk in 1609. It is not known where he obtained his excellent education, but he was esteemed a learned physician and good classical scholar, while it is clear that he could read his Old Testament familiarly in Hebrew, for he was the author of a manuscript concordance and lexicon to the same. He seems to have become a Baptist before his arrival in Boston in 1637. He went to Aquidneck and took part with William Coddington and Anne Hutchinson in establishing the Colony of Rhode Island. In 1639 a Baptist Church was founded at Newport and Dr. Clarke was for many years its teacher. His services to the Commonwealth were so great that history must place him by the side of Roger Williams. Upright and capable in all relations of life he never failed of the courtesy and the dignity that mark the perfect gentleman."
He died 4 April 1676, leaving, among many other bequests, the above mentioned lexicon and concordance to Richard Bailey, presumably of Southhold, as this gift is next to the bequest of "an ewe sheep" to Katharine Salmon, wife of John Salmon of Southold. (This suggests a Bayles connection with the Clarkes.)
Austin's Dict. of RI states that in 1651 John Clarke, Obadiah Holmes and John Crandall, as representatives of the church of Newport, having presumed to hold religious services in the house of an invalid, were arrested and fined. This (Rev.) Obadiah Holmes had land at Southampton on Long Island, in the use and occupation of Samuel Clarke thereat, and later went to Jamaica, and thence perhaps to New Jersey.
Jeremiah Clarke, perhaps brother to John, came 1638 to Aquidneck (later Rhode Island) from whence between 1656 and 1660 many essayed the wrath of teh Bay and of its high priest of persecution John Endicott. Among them were Mary Clarke, Christopher Holder, John Copeland, William Brend, William Robinson, Marmaduke Stevenson and Mary Dyer. Jeremiah served acceptably in several official capacities and died in 1651. The Friends' Records thus comment on his death: "Jeremiah Clarke one of the first English Planters of Rhode Island; he died at Newport on said Island and was buried in the tomb that stands by the street by the water side in Newport upon the (???) day of 11th month 1651.
Walter Clarke, son of Jeremiah, sometime Governor of Rhode Island, married as 2nd wife Hannah Scott, daughter of Richard and Catharine Marbury Scott, and as third wife Sarah Priar Gould, widow of John Gould and daughter of Matthew and Mary (???) Priar, of Killingworth upon Matinecock, Long Island. It may transpire that Matthew Priar's wife was Mary Clarke.
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Data from Ancestry Family Archive CD#501 (immigration records : Immigrants to PA, 1600s-1800s) : "John Clark, son of Walter, received 7 Mo. 6, 1729, dated 3 Mo. 27, 1729, from Grange, County Antrim, Ireland"
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Data from <http://www.strecorsoc.org/docs/rclarke.html>

  Noted events in his life were:

• Religion. Quaker and Baptist