The travels of Sarah Isabelle Pine Clark Estes
The travels of Sarah Isabelle Pine Clark Estes

Jacob William CLARK (3 Jan 1827-7 Oct 1857) +
Sarah Isabelle PINE (11 Sep 1831-2 Jan 1923)

Olive Susannah (11 Mar 1855-9 Sep 1896) — m. Wiley S. Surratt in 1875

Spencer Leroy (1 Aug 1856-13 Jul 1946) — m. Mary Melina Roberts on 25 Feb 1875; m. Mary Richardson Jackson on 9 Oct 1921

Elva Ann (~1858-18xx)

Jacob was the son of Alexander Clark, Jr. and Sarah Ann Perkins from Queens County, New Brunswick, where they lived near the northern end of Grand Lake. There’s a family story that Jacob was French, but his ancestry is more Scottish than anything else. He was baptized on 10 May 1829 by Elias Scovil, the Anglican rector in Kingston who had married his parents. In late 1836, his parents sailed from New Brunswick to Ontario with six of their children, including Jacob. They settled in Blenheim Township, Oxford County, Ontario, where Jacob’s father died in 1843. On 18 Oct 1843, Jacob, his younger brother Caleb, and his mother jointly bought half of his father’s property from his older brother George. This consisted of 50 acres making up the SE quarter of Concession 6, Lot 9 in Blenheim Township. His mother remarried later in the 1840s.

Sarah was born in Blenheim Township, Oxford County, the eldest child of Calvin Pine and Nancy Crumback. Many years later, Sarah recounted these details of her early life to a daughter-in-law:

“I was the oldest of five children, four girls and one boy. We lived in Canada. There was lots of snow in the winter and Father would come out and play in the snow with us. We had lots of fun.

“Father was half French and Mother was German, a good house-keeper, cook, and an excellent mother.

“Father was a farmer. We lived near the U.S. border and he would often take produce to the States. I loved to go with him. He always bought me a new dress, a pair of shoes or something that I could take home and share with the other children.

“I was sure I had the most wonderful father in the world. I loved him dearly.”

Sarah’s mother Nancy died in 1844. On 7 April 1845, Sarah’s father Calvin remarried to Pheba Ann Belyea (Aug 1824-26 Jan 1889) from New Brunswick. Calvin and Pheba went on to have nine more children, plus one adopted child.

Jacob and Sarah married on 14 Nov 1850 in Brock District, Oxford County, Ontario, Canada, about 20 miles west of where Jacob’s mother and her second husband were living. Richard Taylor and Mary Maynard witnessed the marriage, which was performed by Rev. Thomas Robson at the Methodist Episcopal Church, although the couple show up in the census as C. C. (Christian Conference) Baptist. Sarah in later life claimed she married at 16, but records indicate she was 19.

The 1851 census for Blenheim Township listed Jacob Clark (24), farmer, born in New Brunswick, living with his wife Sarah (19) and his brother Caleb (22). This is the only appearance by Jacob in any census. Rounding out the household were laborer Philip Green (17), and servant Augusta McDonald (12), Catholic, from Scotland. They were living right next to Sarah’s father Calvin Pine and stepmother Pheba, and in the same township as her grandfather John Pine and step-grandmother Charlotte. All three were C. C. Baptist households.

The 1850s saw a large movement of settlers from southern Ontario into the new state of Michigan. Sometime in the early 1850s, Jacob and Sarah were among them. Jacob sold the 50-acre farm to James M. Kennedy, and he and Sarah relocated to Kent County, Michigan. Jacob’s nephew John Worden Northrup (1832-1901) and his wife, Sarah’s younger sister Phibe Ann (1838-18 Jul 1868), accompanied them.

Olive Clark and our ancestor Spencer Clark, Jacob and Sarah’s first two children, were born in Kent County. Sarah had a story about that, too. She and Jacob had been married for years with no children, and one day Jacob got her to try Lydia Pinkham’s fertility pills. Many years later, Sarah declared that she had gone on to have twelve children and heartily wished she had never heard of Lydia Pinkham and her pills. It’s a good story, but it can’t be true; Lydia Pinkham didn’t start marketing her home remedies until the 1870s. In fairness, I should say that mistakes in Sarah’s recollections could have been made by the daughter-in-law who recorded them as well as by Sarah herself.

Jacob contracted tuberculosis, and was advised to move south immediately for his health. Accompanied again by John & Phibe Northrup, he and Sarah headed south in late 1856. They got as far as Arkansas. In May of 1857, Jacob bought land in Fulton County, Arkansas, and started a farm. Because of Jacob’s health, they hired Archibald Burris “Archie” Estes (2 Mar 1828-28 Feb 1890) as farm manager. He continued in this role after Jacob, further weakened by the hot summer, died in October 1857 – reportedly 7 October. Sarah later recounted depending heavily on help from friends and neighbors during this time. Jacob’s and Sarah’s last child, Elva Ann, was apparently born after her father’s death.

No one seems to know where Jacob’s grave is. One great-granddaughter of Spencer L. Clark thinks Jacob was buried on the family farm. Where was that?

Well, 1858 tax records for Fulton County list Sarah Clark as owner of a farm at “18N7W”. The obvious assumption – that this code means 36° 18' N latitude by 91° 7' W longitude – turns out to be wrong. It’s a township/range designation from the Public Land Survey System (PLSS), based on the Land Ordinance of 1785 and used in most of the states created from the 1803 Louisiana Purchase territories.

The PLSS divides land into townships six miles on a side, containing 36 one-square-mile (640-acre) sections. Each of these sections is further divided into sixteen 40-acre subsections, called aliquots, by quartering the section and then quartering each quarter. For example, a section’s NW quarter contains four aliquots with the designations NWNW, NENW, SWNW, and SENW. The second two letters of the aliquot identify the 160-acre quarter, and the first two letters are a 40-acre quarter of the quarter or, in some cases, an 80-acre half of the quarter made up of two aliquots.

“18N7W” doesn’t burrow down to the aliquot level. The online BLM land catalog does. Its document 11643 lists Jacob W. Clark as patent holder for 124.47 acres in Township/Range 018N-007W with the designations Section 2, aliquot N½NW¼ (Izard) and Section 3, aliquot NE¼SE¼ (Izard).

That defines a rectangular strip at the northeastern edge of the modern town of Horseshoe Bend, in what is now Izard County but which in the 1850s was part of Fulton County. It runs just south of Day Road, and includes the woods surrounding Inwood Drive, and uncultivated fields to the east along both sides of a tributary of Ben’s Creek. In Google Maps images, this area is undeveloped, no houses, the roads still dirt. It’s possible that a marker for Jacob’s grave is still out there, although it would be a job to find it.

Regional location of Jacob Clark farm
Regional location of Fulton County (now Izard County) farm
Plot of Jacob Clark farm in Horseshoe Bend
Fulton County (now Izard County) farm acreage

In November 1858 (not 1856 as reported by the Estes family chronology), Sarah married Archie Estes. He already had a son, David Granville Estes (7 Feb 1854-17 Aug 1893; m. Isabelle Angeline Moore in 187x), by a previous marriage to Rebecca Roberts – possibly the same Roberts family that Sarah’s son Spencer later married into, although I have no evidence for that. The family moved east to the area of Ash Flat. In 1859, Archie was listed as non-resident owner of the Fulton County farm. The nine children of Archie and Sarah:

Karr Calvin (9 Feb 1860-24 Feb 1945) — m. Nancy Florence Brock in 188x

Laura Pine (22 Jan 1861-7 May 1931) — m. John Wesley Benjamin about 1879

John Burris (30 Jan 1864-16 Dec 1944) — m. Nannie A. King Radcliffe on 12 Jan 1902

Martha Frances “Fanny” (4 Jan 1866-11 Apr 1957) — m. Nirom Madison Hawley

Phoebe A. (1868-28 Nov 1936) — m. Orton William Beardsley

Mary Pietta (4 Feb 1870-23 Apr 1939) — m. George Edward Kitley

Thomas A. (16 Jun 1873-24 May 1924) — m. Anna Josephine Campbell on 21 Dec 1892; divorced; m. Maude H. Johnson on 3 Oct 1914

Jasper West “Jack” (7 Nov 1874-15 Apr 1956) — m. Effie Blankenship on 3 Jul 1902

William George “Willie” (23 May 1877-5 Apr 1940) — m. Anna Myrtle McPherson on 16 Dec 1909

[I should say a little about Archie. He wasn’t our ancestor, but he plays an important role in our family story. He was born in Davidson County, Tennessee, near Nashville. He and his family moved to Arkansas in 1839. He went out to California for the gold rush in 1850 with his brother Tommy and cousins James and Burris Estes. Two years later, he came back. He married Rebecca Roberts (1822-1854) in 1853. Rebecca was probably from Paris, Henry County in northwestern Tennessee. Archie and Rebecca had one child, David Estes, and then Rebecca died. Archie’s and Sarah’s grandson William Archibald “Bill” Estes (1912-2002), a Tucson, Arizona home builder, did extensive research on the Estes family and wrote a book, Descendants of Archibald Burris Estes and Sarah Isabelle Pine, published 1983.]

The 1860 census had Archie (30) and Sarah (25) living in Richwoods Township, Lawrence County. Children were David G. (6), Olive S. (5), Spencer L. (4), Elva A. (2), and “Can” (Calvin, age 0). Calvin was the first of 9 children to be born to Archie and Sarah. This was not the Richwoods Township that’s part of the modern Lawrence County. It was the one that includes Ash Flat and the area just south of it, on the western side of what is now Sharp County. Sharp County didn’t exist until 1868.

Sarah’s sister Phibe and her husband John Northrup, who was described as having itchy feet, left Arkansas in 1859 for the Oregon territories before the census could find them. They thereby avoided the coming hardships of the Civil War. However, one or possibly two of their children died on the Oregon Trail, and Phibe died of tuberculosis in 1868, leaving several children, including one named John Calvin after her father. She’s buried in Mountain View Cemetery, Walla Walla, Washington.

Sarah and Archie stayed put through the 1860s. The war years were hard. The boys hid livestock in the woods to protect it from the increasingly desperate Confederate raiders, but in the end, the raiders got it all. The farm never fully recovered. The 1870 census showed the family still in Richwoods Township, now part of the newly created Sharp County. The children were David (16), Olive S. (15), Spencer L. (14), Elvey A. (12), Calvin (10), Laura (8), John B. (6), Martha (4), “Abbey” A. (Phoebe, 2), and Mary P. (4 months). Moses and Mary Roberts, grandparents of Spencer’s future wife and so also our ancestors, were living nearby – close enough to be on the same page of the census.

In 1874, leaving only Spencer behind, Archie and Sarah and all of the other children joined the wagon trains going west. The journey took about six months. Sarah’s oral account of it is well worth reading, although I think one story mixed up her daughter Laura Estes with her older daughter Elva Ann Clark. That, or she had Laura’s age wrong by a couple of years. The family intended to continue to Oregon or the area that is now Washington, because other Estes family members had settled there as early as the 1850s. They stopped to rest in Moscow, Idaho where some of the Northrups were, and decided to stay, possibly because Olive promptly got married there.

The 1880 census found Archibald (55) and Sarah (45) settled at a homestead about four miles north of Moscow, which at the time was part of Nez Perce County rather than Latah County. Their children were Calvin (20), John (16), Fanny (14), Phoebe (12), Mary (10), Thomas (7), Jasper (5), and Willie (3). Jasper was born in Arkansas, and Willie in Idaho, straddling the date of the family’s journey west. Archie taught the first public school in the Moscow district.

Archie, like Jacob, suffered from tuberculosis. He died suddenly in Moscow on 28 Feb 1890, and is buried in Moscow Cemetery.

In 1900, Sarah still had her two youngest, Jasper and Willie, at home. She told the census that she had twelve children, ten still living. That would be Spencer and all nine of her Estes children. By 1910, she was living alone. By 1920, she was living with her son Jasper, his wife Effie (the one who wrote down Sarah’s stories), and their many children.

Sarah died of acute myocarditis in 1923, and is buried with Archie in Moscow Cemetery.

A book called Mother of Counties, published by the Lawrence County Historical Society in 2001, contains a lot of information about the Clark family, including a small photo of Sarah.

Sarah Pine Clark Estes
Sarah Pine Clark Estes

Children of Jacob and Sarah

Olive Susannah Clark (1855-1896)

Olive traveled to Idaho with her mother and stepfather in 1874. She married Wiley Porter Spencer Surratt (29 Mar 1849-20 Apr 1902) from Tennessee in 1875. They had three children that I know of, although there could have been others born after 1880:

Minnie Belle (29 Nov 1875-30 Jul 1933) — m. Edward Adney West on 17 Jul 1893

Wiley Spencer (22 Oct 1877-18 Sep 1940) — m. Idalia Eunice Deyo; m. Rena Hobart in 1930

William Porter (19 Jun 1880-28 Aug 1956) — m. Rena Hobart; m. Cynthia A. Wilcox in 1920; m. Rena Hobart again in 1955

The 1880 census for Nez Perce County, Idaho listed them with children Minnie (4), Wiley (2), and William (0). Olive died in 1896 and is buried in Moscow Cemetery. An inscription on the gravestone reads, “She was a kind and affectionate wife, a fond mother, and kind to all.” In 1900, Wiley was living with son Wiley, Jr. in Moscow. He died two years later, and is buried with Olive.

Spencer Leroy Clark (1856-1946)

Spencer has his own entry in the family tree.

Elva Ann Clark (~1858-18xx)

Elva Ann was also called Elvey and Belle. She had a cousin of about the same age named Elva Ann Northrup, also born in Arkansas, whose family also took the Oregon Trail. The Pine-Crumback family page has details about this namesake, but I have nothing on Elva Ann Clark after 1870. She might have died before her family headed west, or maybe she married out in Idaho and disappeared behind a husband’s surname. A search of the 1880 census for Idaho and Oregon turns up no one who fits her profile – except her cousin. In any case, it appears she died by 1900.

Children of Olive Clark

Minnie Belle Surratt (1875-1933)

According to a family story, Minnie was promised to a son of the Albers family, but instead fell for Edward Adney West (1 Feb 1870-22 May 1951), a young cowboy from Pennsylvania who visited her family home. She married him in Walla Walla, Washington on 17 Jul 1893. She was reportedly disinherited by her parents and never spoke to them again. Minnie and Edward lived at first in Washington. They reportedly had eleven children. There are records for nine:

Lawrence Adney (4 Oct 1895-4 Jul 1940) — never married

Lillian Abigail (5 Apr 1896-29 Oct 1965) — m. Edward Henry Buscombe on 16 Oct 1917; divorced; m. Niels Chrestensen

unnamed girl (5 Apr 1896-5 Apr 1896)

Mabel Estrella (9 Dec 1899-7 Feb 1981) — m. Thomas William Nicholas on 27 Mar 1922

Harry Emerson (22 Oct 1901-16 Apr 1972) — m. ????

Marguerite Anna (4 Feb 1910-Jun 1992) — m. Frederick P. Abdallah on 29 Jul 1933; widowed 1946; m. Elmo G. Hart

Howard Edward (25 Jan 1911-10 Sep 1977) — m. Angelina Manvelli in 1942

Minnie Elizabeth “Betty” (2 Feb 1916-11 Aug 1996) — m. Samuel Christian Doss

Richard Andrew (29 Nov 1919-20 May 2007) — m. Eleanor Ruth Lillybridge on 5 Feb 1943

They moved to California before 1910, then to Oregon, then back to California. Minnie died in 1933 in Stockton, San Joaquin County, California, and is buried there. Edward died in San Joaquin County in 1951 and is buried with her. Son Richard was a US Marine at Pearl Harbor on 7 Dec 1941, and served in the Pacific during the war.

Wiley Spencer Surratt (1877-1940)

Wiley moved to Sherman County, Oregon, and later to Columbia County. He was a veterinarian. His first wife was Idalia E. (1886-????) from Nebraska. They seem to have had one child, born in Nebraska:

Delbert L. (1904-????)

I don’t know what happened to Idalia or Delbert after 1920. In 1930, Wiley married his brother William’s ex-wife Rena Hobart (16 Feb 1889-12 Nov 1959) from Moscow, Idaho. She came with a daughter, Bertha Lee Gibson (1922-?11 May 1979?), from her second marriage. Wiley died in 1940 in Columbia County, Oregon, and is buried in Old Yankton Cemetery in St. Helens there. Rena later re-married Wiley’s brother William, with whom she had already had three children.

William Porter Surratt (1880-1956)

William married Rena Hobart (16 Feb 1889-12 Nov 1959) from his home town of Moscow, Idaho, daughter of Mark H. Hobart and Martha Jane Rogers. William and Rena lived in Washington, and had three children:

Myrtle Elma (1906-????) — m. Clifford Irving Calahan on 26 Dec 1918; m. Louis L. Jordan on 27 Nov 1920; poss. m. Thomas B. Patterson

Ray Harold (1907-1964)

Ellery Porter (11 Feb 1909-4 May 1944)

At some point, William and Rena split up, and she married someone named O. F. Gibson. William served in the Coastal Artillery during WWI. He married Cynthia A. Wilcox (6 Jun 1884-18 Mar 1955) from Oregon, date undetermined. William and Cynthia lived in Mason County, Washington, and had two children I know of:

Wiley E. (7 Oct 1922-23 Aug 1964)

Laura O. (23 Jan 1927-13 Mar 2000) — m. John Oliver Swett

In 1955, after Cynthia’s death, William re-married Rena, who had in the interim been married to two other men, one of them William’s late brother Wiley. William died the following year. He is buried in Shelton Memorial Park, Shelton, Mason County, Washington, as are both of his wives.

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