Brief Life History of William
When William Clark was christened on 29 September 1765, in Woolley, Yorkshire, England, United Kingdom, his father, John Clark, was 28 and his mother, Mary Hall, was 27.
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Family Time Line
Sources (2)
- William Clark, "England Births and Christenings, 1538-1975"
- William Clarke, "England, Yorkshire, Bishop's Transcripts, 1547-1957"
Parents and Siblings
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World Events (8)
1770 · Boston Tea Party
Thousands of British troops were sent to Boston to enforce Britain's tax laws. Taxes were repealed on all imports to the American Colonies except tea. Americans, disguised as Native Americans, dumped chests of tea imported by the East India Company into the Boston Harbor in protest. This escalated tensions between the American Colonies and the British government.
1775 · The Shot Heard Around the World
"On April 18, 1775, a shot known as the ""shot heard around the world"" was fired between American colonists and British troops in Lexington, Massachusetts. This began the American War for Independence. Fifteen months later, Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence. The Treaty of Paris was signed in September 1783 which ended the war. The colonies were no longer under British rule. Many who fought for the British fled to Canada, the West Indies, and some to England."
1815
The defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte at Waterloo marks the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Napoleon defeated and exiled to St. Helena.
Name Meaning
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 .
Dictionary of American Family Names © Patrick Hanks 2003, 2006.
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