Clark family background
by Alex. C. McLaren
Andrew Inglis Clark was born on 24 February 1848 in Macquarie Street,
Hobart, the sixth son and eighth of the nine children of Alexander
Clark and his wife Ann, the youngest daughter of John Inglis (1775-1846),
a stocking maker of Kirkaldy, and his wife Ann Wyllie. The house
has not been identified but it was probably not far from Barrack
Street where, at No 4, Alex Clark and his partner Henry Davidson
were the proprietors of the Derwent Foundry. Alexander Clark, together
with wife, his father and mother, and other members of the family,
had emigrated from Scotland in 1832.
Andrew Inglis Clark's father
Alexander Clark Enlarge
The earliest known record relating to the family is
the birth of Andrew Clark in 1775 in Kinghorn, a small town on the
northern shore of the Firth of Forth, almost opposite Edinburgh.
Although Kinghorn has a long and noble history (at one time being
the home and resort of royalty), by the end of the 18th century
its only importance appears to have been due to its command of the
ferry service which provided the main means of transport along the
east coast. However, in time, new methods of transport brought an
end even to this usefulness.
Kinghorn, Scotland (A. McLaren)
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Kinghorn, Scotland (A. McLaren)
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When Andrew Clark was born, Scotland was still an agrarian,
pre-industrial society. However, by the early 1830s, urbanization
and the development of steam-powered manufacture and transportation,
as well as the drastic reorganization of agriculture, had turned
Scotland into an industrial society. Thus, by becoming a cart- and
ploughwright and joiner, Andrew Clark adopted a trade which was
highly appropriate to the times. In July 1796 Andrew married Agnes
Peers in Kinghorn. They had eight children, of whom Alexander, born
in 1809, was the youngest son.
It is clear from the letters and other documents which
Alex Clark wrote in later life, that he must have received a sound
basic education. After some years in his father's employment, he
served a second apprenticeship with Alexander Russell who owned
and operated the Kirkaldy Foundry and Engineering Works. Alex Clark's
subsequent career indicates that by the time he had completed this
apprenticeship he would have been experienced in the techniques
of the iron foundry and in the construction of windmills, watermills,
and steam engines, and their application in agriculture and the
manufacturing industry. Kirkaldy, being on the coast and near coal
fields, was also admirably situated for him to gain special experience
of steamers (there were probably as many as 40 on the Forth at the
time) and the use of the steam engine in coal mines.
We can only speculate as to why the Clarks decided to
emigrate. It is likely that the motivation came from Alex, and it
is not hard to believe that he was influenced by the decision of
Alexander Russell's brother Robert (also an engineer) to settle
in Van Diemen's Land. The view that Hobart Town offered good opportunities
for engineering was probably widely held at the time because three
other Scottish engineers, James and William Robertson, and Henry
Davidson, also emigrated to Van Diemen's Land in 1832.
The death of Andrew Clark during the voyage and the
later departure of David (Alex's elder brother) for California where
he died in 1849, meant that Alex may be legitimately called the
founder of the Clark family in Tasmania.
Walker's Mill with chimney erected by Alexander
Clark in 1836.
Pencil drawing by Fern Rowntree from her Hobart Town sketch book.
Enlarge.
In Tasmania, Alex Clark established a highly successful
engineering business and over a working life of nearly 50 years,
he applied his skills to agriculture, flour milling, timber milling,
coal mining, shipping and ship-building, soap manufacturing, and
water supply. He undertook a number of Government contracts and
undoubtedly made a significant contribution to the economic development
of Tasmania in the 19th Century. His most significant single engineering
achievement was surely the supervision of the construction of the
granary and flour mill (powered by a water-wheel and a treadmill)
for the Royal Engineers at the Port Arthur penal settlement on Tasman
Peninsula from January 1843 to June 1845. The building was later
converted to a penitentiary, the ruins of which are still Port Arthur's
most prominent architectural feature. The correspondence between
Alex Clark and the Commanding Royal Engineer (Major James Conway
Victor) reveals the breadth of Clark's engineering knowledge, his
attention to detail, practical expertise and ability to organise
a large and complex undertaking, as well as his directness, honesty,
confidence in his own ability, impatience with bureaucratic interference
and uninformed criticism, readiness to acknowledge support, sensitivity
to the aesthetic aspects of his work, and his somewhat sardonic
wit. Perhaps more importantly, his letters also reveal his humanity:
his concern for the welfare of his men (both generally and individually)
and his abhorrence of "inhuman laws" and magistrates who
fail "to administer Justice with the unsparing hand of Impartially
to the Needy and to the opulent".
All of the sons of Alex Clark (with the exception of
another Andrew who died in infancy in 1843) were involved in the
family business at various times. John, the eldest, managed the
Salamanca Place branch of the business (which Alex Clark started
in 1859) until about 1885 when he was appointed Government Inspector
of Machinery. The works were then operated by Robert Kennedy &
Sons, who later bought them. James took over the management of the
foundry and timber mills in Collins Street after his father nominally
retired in 1869. However, from about late 1870s James became more
involved in other business enterprises in Hobart and the management
passed to his younger brother Henry. Under his leadership the engineering
activities were gradually wound down and by the time Alex Clark
died in 1894, the business was solely concerned with saw milling
and the sale of timber. After Henry's death in 1921 the business
was sold to Risby Brothers. Alexander, the fourth son, died as the
result of an accident in a mill near Geelong in 1857, in his 19th
year, and Andrew Inglis left the family business to study law in
1872, at the age of 24.
Andrew Inglis Clark's mother,
Ann Clark Enlarge
Although Alex Clark was nominally a Presbyterian and
freemason, he was apparently not a religious man in the usually
accepted sense, and there is nothing to indicate that his humanism
and social consciousness were anything but secular in origin. However,
his wife's concern for human welfare seems to have been based firmly
on her passionate devotion to the Baptist Church. Her influence
within the family was considerable. All the children attended the
Baptist Sabbatical School. John does not appear to have been much
influenced, and there are no indications that he was particularly
involved in the affairs of any church in later life. Annie and Janet
remained more-or-less regular church-goers throughout their lives
and Agnes (who married D.B.McLaren) inherited her mother's religious
zeal with a vengeance. James Clark was active in the Harrington
Street Baptist Chapel from the early 1860s. He was elected a deacon
and made chairman in early 1868, a position he retained until 1872
when the Church was dissolved as the result of a motion put by Andrew
Inglis who had previously withdrawn from the Thursday meetings for
a time because of "the lack of discipline and proper order
of government in worship." Andrew never returned to the Church,
but James is listed among the trustees in 1879 and when the Church
was reformed in 1882, Henry was a member of the committee.
Agnes Clark,
Andrew Inglis Clark's sister
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Janet Clark,
Andrew Inglis Clark's sister
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In short, Andrew Inglis Clark's Scottish background
was Lowland, artisan. As a consequence of his father's professional
success in Tasmania, he grew up in a large and elegant house alongside
the family foundry in Collins Street. The house was furnished with
solid, unfussy colonial cedar furniture, good china, paintings,
and books; in fact, with all the creature-comforts expected by a
middle-class professional family of the time. Both parents had the
traditional Scottish reverence for education; John was even sent
to Scotland in 1848 to be trained as an engineer and Andrew Inglis
was sent to the High School, near the Domain. The Clarks were democrats
and would "ne'er forget the People." They put the highest
value on professionalism, integrity, compassion for their fellow
human beings, and the basics of Christian morality. There can be
little doubt that liberal discussion of moral and local political
issues, as well as of religion and the arts, was a part of their
home life.
By the standards of 19th Century Tasmania, Andrew Inglis
Clark was among the radicals. However, I suggest, that by the standards
of his family he was essentially a conservative. Even though he
gave up engineering for the law and the Baptist Church for Unitarianism,
his thinking and philosophical development were not fundamentally
in conflict with the basic ideals of his family. He was a natural
product and extension of his parents, and his career reflects their
values.
The history of Andrew Inglis Clarks family and
descendants is related and discussed more fully in Alex McLaren,
Practical Visionaries. Three Generations of the Inglis Clark
Family in Tasmania and Beyond, Hobart; Centre for Tasmanian
Historical Studies, forthcoming.
See also: Clark's Biography
and Tasmanian and family
background
Clark's
Family Tree
Clark family group at Rosebank,
Battery Point. From left to right:
Andrew, Carrel, Esma, Wendell, Ethel, Grace, Andrew and Alex
(Clark Papers, Archives, University of Tasmania)
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