When Captain Aaron Clark was born in 1750, in Elizabethtown, Essex, New Jersey, British Colonial America, his father, Abraham Clark, was 24 and his mother, Sarah Price Hatfield, was 22. He married Susannah Winans in 1770, in New York Colony, British Colonial America. They were the parents of at least 3 sons and 5 daughters. He lived in Washington, Pennsylvania, United States in 1790 and Canton Township, Washington, Pennsylvania, United States for about 10 years. He died on 18 December 1811, in Woodbridge Township, Middlesex, New Jersey, United States, at the age of 61, and was buried in Rahway, Union, New Jersey, United States.
English: from Middle English clerk, clark ‘clerk, cleric, writer’ (Old French clerc; see Clerc ). The original sense was ‘man in a religious order, cleric, clergyman’. As all writing and secretarial work in medieval Christian Europe was normally done by members of the clergy, the term clerk came to mean ‘scholar, secretary, recorder, or penman’ as well as ‘cleric’. As a surname, it was particularly common for one who had taken only minor holy orders. In medieval Christian Europe, clergy in minor orders were permitted to marry and so found families; thus the surname could become established.
Irish (Westmeath, Mayo): in Ireland the English surname was frequently adopted, partly by translation for Ó Cléirigh; see Cleary .
Americanized form of Dutch De Klerk or Flemish De Clerck or of variants of these names, and possibly also of French Clerc . Compare Clerk 2 and De Clark .
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