Gold Rush adventures chronicled in new book

“Enterprising Young Men,” is an account of the adventures of young Marion County, Missouri, men, who participated in the California Gold Rush. Edited and compiled by Marsha K. Clark.

MARY LOU MONTGOMERY

On April 7, 1850, twenty-one-year-old Robert Mason Clark, along with six comrades, including his brother, Sam, set out on an adventure to cross half a continent in the pursuit of gold. After much planning and the gathering of supplies, the seven men left Marion County, Mo., with oxen and wagons, and traversed the primarily unsettled territory between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean.

At the age of 74, Clark, a Marion County farmer, penned a series or stories about the adventure, subsequently published in the Hunnewell Graphic newspaper in 1903. His writing detailed unique and unreplicated accounts of the era of his adventure to the west and back.

“Please forgive me,” he wrote in his early columns, “I have never had a formal education in grammar.”

Marsha K. Clark, whose husband, James L. Clark, is Robert Clark’s great grandson, found a box of papers related to the journey when cleaning out her father-in-law’s house some 18 years ago.

She learned that her husband’s aunt, Edna, had received copies of the newspaper serial from her cousin. Edna typed up the memoir, using a manual typewriter. She used carbon sheets, Clark believes, in order to make copies for family members.

“The copies were so hard to read,” she said, with double spacing and all capital letters. The original newspaper accounts were also hard to read, with run-on sentences and type packed tightly from margin to margin.

Marsha took on the task of converting the memoir into a readable and understandable format. "I knew from reading this story it needs to be shared.” She traced down geographic information, consulted with contacts and reviewed available documents.

Now, 18 years later, Marsha has compiled the stories that Robert Mason Clark told, along with explanations to help the reader understand the historic perspective, into a book entitled, “Enterprising Young Men, The California Gold Rush Memoir of Missourian Robert Mason Clark.”

Of particular interest are the accounts of traveling through Marion and Shelby counties, “reading some of the harsher things, and what it was like. He was a person of his time. I did not change any of the language in the book.

“One of things the book reveals is how much it impacted this man’s life. He became a spiritual person.” The Methodist faith that he embraced continued down through the generations of the Clark family.

“The Clark family valued hard work,” Marsha said. On the way home from California, Robert Clark and his comrades came by way of ship, along the Pacific Ocean route, to Nicaragua and Cuba, then on to New Orleans, where they ventured by boat up the Mississippi River to St. Louis, then by horseback to Palmyra.

Robert Clark wrote that the ship kept getting stuck on sandbars in the Mississippi River.

Everyone would help to drag the boats back into the channel, Marsha said. “Late at night, there was a large group of German immigrants coming up the river on the boat, making music and dancing. The pilot asked them to come help, and the reply was ‘We are dancing.’

“It is the human interactions that make this book,” she said, “interaction with nature. It is such a rewarding read. All of their different encounters - in their own human mortality, relationships, affections or lack thereof. It could make a great movie, but that is what we all say when we read a good book.”

Clark cousins

Mia Fleeglel (1952-2018) was a descendant of Sam Clark, who accompanied his brother, Robert, on the trip.

“Mia took me to the graveyards, where Sam and Robert Clark are buried. I only recently discovered that Robert’s father and mother were among the original members of the Mount Vernon Methodist Church. That little Methodist Church is still in operation.”

“A real gift of history is discovering yourself by reading history,” Marsha said. “Every family had to have a crazy aunt who does the family history.”

She now identifies herself as that “crazy aunt.”

She has been invited to speak regarding the book to the “Palmyra Seekers,” on Monday, May 19.

The book, distributed by IngramSpark, is available through wherever books are sold, or through the link: clarkgoldrush.online