Richard Clark was the first of three sons of George and Margaret Hanna Clark,
was born in Cumberland County, PA, probably on 5 Dec 1774.  Richard's Patriarchal
Blessing, given in Nauvoo, 12 Feb 1845 states that he was born "Dec 5 - record burnt".
An old account book of George Sheffer Clark's gives his birth date as 3 Feb 1774.
Another record gives his birth date as Feb 1777, while a paper in Joseph B. Clark's
handwriting reads, "Richard Clark was born March 20, 1776" and an old Manti Temple
sheet gives the date as 1778.  The date of his birth as it appears on his Temple Records
and the one that has been most commonly used is 5 Dec 1776.  This same record sheet,
which is dated October 27, 1891, give the place of birth of birth of the first seven children
of Richard and Ann Elizabeth Sheffer Clark as Jefferson County, Ohio.  However, a
Family Group Sheet in the Family History Library in Salt Lake City indicates that the first
six members of the family were born in Pennsylvania.  The record made most closely in
time to his birth, the US Census of 1820 of Montgomery County, Ohio, gives Richard's
age as 45 years or over, which would mean that he was born in 1774.  Richard's two
brothers were born, John, 3 Aug 1779 and George, 15 Oct 1781.
 It is quite probable that Richard and Ann Elizabeth Sheffer were married in
Pennsylvania in about 1800 and moved westward about 200 miles to Ohio in about 1816
to Jefferson County, which is located on the Ohio-West Virginia border, about forty miles
west of the city of Pittsburgh, PA.  Here their son, George Sheffer was born.  Family
Group Records and other sources show that George Sheffer Clark was born on 7 Nov
1816 in Springfield Township, Jefferson County, and that the family lived there for about
one year.
Springfield Township is on the west border of the County and even today Amsterdam,
pop. 800, is about the only town in the township.   The eastern part of Ohio, known as the
Appalachian Plateau, is the most rugged part of the State, with steep hills and valleys.  The
soil is mostly thin and not fertile.  The land is mostly used for grazing of dairy cattle.  It
has some of the most beautiful scenery of the State. The land was probably not suitable for
the farming needs of the family, and in about 1817 they moved about 100 miles to
Uniontown (now Ashland) in Richland County, Ohio, in 1829 to Marion County, Indiana,
in the early 1840's to Nauvoo, Illinois and later to Iowa and Utah.
 They had  traveled a little North of West from Jefferson County to Uniontown
which had been first settled about two years before.  This is located in North central Ohio
in what is known as the Till Plains, which are the easternmost part of the rich midwestern
Corn Belt.  In current times the farmers in this locale produce much grain and livestock
and the area has many industrial cities.  An informative description of the country in
Ashland County is given in the History of Richland County, of which it was then a part.
Uniontown, located in Montgomery Township, was laid out July 28, 1815 by William
Montgomery, when "- - - it was all woods, and deer, bears and wolves roamed
unmolested.  There was not a cabin or building of any kind on the site."  Montgomery
erected the first cabin and occupied the lot upon which Treace's tavern was later erected.
He was engaged in distilling whiskey and was proprietor of a tannery.
 In 1817 Joseph Sheets, William Montgomery, David Markley and John Croft and
their families were the whole population of the town.  Markley sold groceries, whiskey,
etc., Samuel Urie had the first blacksmith shop, Nicholas Shaffer the first carpenter shop,
John Antibus the first hattery and John Croft a tannery.  The first vehicle, a carriage, was
brought in 1821 by Dr. Luther, probably the first physician.  Also in 1821 when Francis
Graham brought dry goods and groceries, he stated that "--- it was a village of fourteen or
fifteen families, two distilleries, on saw-mill, one small tannery, on wheelwright shop for
the manufacture of wheels for flax-spinning, one blacksmith shop, kept by Samuel Urie,
and one physician, Dr. Joel Luther."  Markley kept the first store, and Joseph Sheets the
second, while Mr. Graham later carried a general stock and started a permanent store.  He
found goods in demand, but people had no money to pay for them, so exchanged for
produce.  "Wheat was worth about 25 cents per bushel, but no one wanted to buy it for
family use, and, as there was no market outside the immediate neighborhood, but little was
raised.  Oats were traded off at 12 to 15 cents per bushel;  corn was in better demand, and
brought, in goods, from 15 to 20 cents per bushel, and became almost legal tender because
it could be converted into whiskey, which could be freighted to the lake, and found a
ready market.  Maple sugar was also an important item or trade, and was made in large
quantities, bringing 4 to 6 cents per pound."
 In 1822 the Postmaster General was petitioned for a post office at Uniontown but
the request was rejected because there were two Uniontown post offices in the state.  The
name Ashland was chosen, the mail carried on horseback for a year, until the Post Office
department would no longer pay expenses and withdrew the contract.  Mr. Graham hired
a mail carrier for three years at a financial loss.  The name Uniontown was officially
changed by the Legislature in 1825.
The first school in Uniontown was taught by Therrygood Smith, but the cabin in which
school was held was burned down in 1824 when it caught fire from its lath and plaster
chimney.  In a house erected in 1924 Chandler Foote taught, and the third school was
taught in 1826 by Cullen Spaulding.  Some of Richard and Ann Elizabeth Clark's children
most probably attended these schools, John, William, Jacob, George S. and Julia Ann,
being of school-age when they lived in Uniontown (Ashland).
 The above very brief history covers the period the Clark's were living in
Uniontown, where they had moved about the year 1817, and their family was
unquestionably one of the fifteen referred to by the historian above, and  Nicholas Shaffer
(Sheffer?), the carpenter named could have been a brother of Ann Elizabeth.  Also, David
Markley, the store owner listed, was the man from whom Richard and Elizabeth bought
Lot 4 in Uniontown as described in the deed below.  Richard is listed in the 1820 Census
as "being engaged in manufacturing". After they sold their lot in Ashland the family then
moved another 200 miles farther West to Marion, Indiana, located about 50 miles North
and a little East of Indianapolis, where their youngest daughter, Nancy, was born 26 Feb
1829.  Marion is located in the Till Plains, which extend to the East into Ohio.  The region
has rich soil and is good for raising grain and for the grazing of livestock.  It is also near
the Mississinewa River, a branch of the Wabash River where Richard's son George S. later
worked at freighting pork down the river to the Ohio and Mississippi River to New
Orleans.  Clarinda Clark married Hyrum Ranck and lived at Donaldson, about 20 miles
South of South Bend.  Julia Ann Clark married Stephen M. Farnsworth and her first two
sons were born at Plymouth, near Donaldson, and at South Bend, Indiana.
 Thus, the Clark family lived in Ohio and Indiana during the period of the
Restoration of the Gospel and the organization of the Church of Jesus CHrist of Latter-
Day Saints.  Richard Clark and his family were rather strict Methodists, but when they
heard the Gospel from Franklin D. Richards, a missionary of the L.D.S. Church in about
1842, all of the children who were at home at the time embraced the teachings of the
Gospel and were baptized, except Nancy who was about eleven years of age.  George
Sheffer was not at home when his parents joined the Church, but became converted soon
afterward and was baptized in 1843.  Thus those who were baptized included Richard,
Ann Elizabeth, George Sheffer, Lucinda, Julia Ann and Nancy.  William was probably
baptized later.  Clarinda, a twin of Lucinda, married Hyrum Ranck and remained in
Indiana.  Soon after the first group in the family joined the Church they moved to Nauvoo,
Illinois, to be with the Saints and help in the building of the beautiful Nauvoo Temple.
Richard Clark, being an expert cabinet maker, did a great deal of work on the interior
finishing of the Temple. In 1846 when the Saints were driven from Nauvoo, the Clarks
joined in the movement of the body of the members across Iowa and soon purchased land
near Council Bluffs, Iowa.  They kept an inn for travelers as they had previously done in
Ohio and Indiana.  Later in 1846 George Sheffer joined the Mormon Battalion and
marched with them to the Mexican Border.  He left the main Battalion and returned with a
sick detachment to Pueblo for the winter or 1846-47, and then joined the first company of
Pioneers near Fort Bridger in July of 1847, entering Salt Lake Valley with Brigham
Young.  He reurned to Iowa in 1847 and in March of 1850 he married Susannah Dalley, a
young English convert.  Following the lead of the other members of the Church in May of
1850, in company of their younger children, Richard and Elizabeth set out across the
plains to make the long journey to the Salt Lake Valley, to establish their home on the
sagebrush covered foothills of the Wasatch Mountains.  They traveled in Captain Cook's
Company which arrived in the Great Salt Lake Valley on September 3, 1850.  They
attended a conference on September 8, 1850 and were instructed to go to Utah Valley to
settle.   According to some reports, Church leaders had first proposed to use Utah Valley
as a stock range and as a source of fish for the people in Salt Lake Valley, but decided
against this because of Indian problems.  Richard's son, George Sheffer was appointed to
be in charge of the group of settlers which was made up of his wife, Susannah: Richard
Clark and his wife, Ann Elizabeth; John Greenleaf Holman and his wife, Nancy Clark
Holman;  Lewis Harvey and his wife Lucinda Clark Harvey;  Lewis Harvey's parents,
Jonathon Lewis and Sarah Harbet Harvey;  Charles Price and family;  Henry Jolley and
family; and the widow Harriet Marler and her family;  all together with the teamsters John
Wilson and Ezekiel Holman. This small band of settlers established a settlement on the
sloping hills at the foot of Timpanogas mountain in what is now the eastern part of
Pleasant Grove, setting up their community in a grove of cottonwood trees.  This site was
south of a small cabin where herd boys were living while tending the cattle of Lewis
Robinson and Calvin Moore.  The location of the tiny colony was only a short distance
east from the meadow land that had been staked off two months before by William Henry
Adams, John Mercer and Philo T. Farnsworth for their new home sites.  The Clarks and
their group arrived on September 13, 1850 and became the first permanent residents of the
community that was first named Battle Creek and later Pleasant Grove.  Thus, Richard
and his family repeated the pioneering and community building that they had done in
Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Iowa.  The total distance Richard and his wife
had traveled from central Pennsylvania to Utah was well over 2500 miles, through sparsely
settled or inhabited county with few roads or trails, or even no roads at all.
 The history of the Utah Valley area states that the first white men to explore it
were the Spanish in 1776 and Jedediah Smith and Charles Fremont in the 1820's and
1840's. George Sheffer Clark had also visited Utah Valley in the fall of 1847 with Jesse C.
Little just after the first pioneer party had arrived at Salt Lake Valley.
 Parley P. Pratt and a party had also explored Utah Lake, while Adams, Mercer and
Farnsworth had staked land near the base of Mount Timpanogos, and a group of 150
pioneers had settled in Provo in March of 1850.  The towns of American Fork, Lehi and
Alpine were also settled later in 1850 or early 1851.  But the country was strange,
inhabited by sometimes hostile Indians, with farming land that required irrigation, many
hundreds of miles from the nearest concentration of civilization.
 Richard Clark's mother, Margaret Hanna Clark, was of Scotch-Irish descent and
Richard spoke with a slight Irish brogue even though his ancestors had been in America
for at least two or three generations.  He was a stern, yet devout and kindly man.  His
family was well disciplined and he did his best to give them an education.  They attended
schools when they were available, and for the children the evenings were devoted to
school work, with the father conducting spelling lessons, debates and reading classes.  To
Richard it was a sin to lack the ability to read, write and express ideas, and his children
were drilled in these important qualifications.
 He was an expert in his trade and was able to build with skill as well as to instruct
others in the art of working with woods.  He was concerned with having his family know
how to be self sufficient and he consistently acquired enough acreage of land to raise food
crops for family and animals, to teach his sons how to till the soil and especially to
produce what the family needed to eat.

Richard Clark worked at his trade during all the time he lived in Ohio, where his possible
brother- in-law, Nicholas Shaffer, owned a carpenter shop, as well as in Indiana and
Illinois.  But when he finally reached Utah Valley he was about 75 years of age, quite ill
and was not able to do any heavy work.  Ezekiel Holman, a boy of 16 years, had driven
Richard's wagon across the plains to Salt Lake City and thence to Pleasant Grove.  He
was almost an invalid for the last three years of his life, but his experience and advice were
invaluable to the younger men of the sprouting new town, and he taught then how to build
their homes.  He was the father of seven children to who he gave a rich heritage by his
teaching and example.  He died in Pleasant Grove on February 5, 1854 at the age of 80
years. Ann Elizabeth Sheffer, eldest daughter of Phillip Sheffer and Margaret Vance, was
born in Adams County, Pennsylvania, 29 May 1785.  Her father, as did Richard's, saw
active service with George Washington during the Revolutionary War and her mother was
noted for her fine cooking, excellent home and beautiful sewing.  Tradition in the Sheffer
family says the Phillip broke off his teeth biting the lead for bullets and that in the last days
of the war he served as a wagon master for his General.  Phillip Sheffer was born in
Northhampton County, Pennsylvania, a center for German emigrants, 29 Sep 1858, but
after the Revolution he moved to Westmoreland County and then to the State of Ohio,
where he lived first in Harrison County and then in Ashland, Richland County, where
Richard and Ann Elizabeth Clark had lived earlier.  In the obituary written for the Ashland
Standard at the time of his death, May 13, 1847, R. V. Kennedy said that, "Phillip Sheffer
was universally esteemed, an example of integrity, moral worth and industry . . . he had no
enemies."  Phillip and Margaret had a large family and many descendants.
 It was about the year 1800 that Ann Elizabeth married Richard Clark.  As noted
above they lived for a time in Pennsylvania, moved to Jefferson County, Ohio, then to
Uniontown where they purchased a lot and here several of their children were born.
George Sheffer, their seventh child, was born in Jefferson County in 1816 and it was
shortly after his birth that the family moved to Uniontown, where her brother Nicholas
may have resided and her father later lived in the 1840's and died in 1847.  They moved to
Marion, Indiana in about 1830, the year the L.D.S. Church was organized, living near
Indianapolis.  It was here that she and the other Clarks living at home accepted the Gospel
and were baptized.
 After joining the Church they soon sold their property and moved to Nauvoo,
Illinois, to be with other people of their faith.  Since most of their family were grown,
Richard and Ann Elizabeth were joined by their five youngest children.  They were happy
to associate with their beloved Prophet, Joseph Smith, and other leaders of the Church and
Richard worked energetically as a cabinet maker in the building of the Nauvoo Temple.
Elizabeth, as her mother before her had done, kept an inn and busied herself in caring for
weary travelers and sick people, as well as doing a great deal of cooking.  She became
known as a well qualified midwife and practiced the profession until the end of her life.
The troubles of the Saints in Nauvoo were a great sorrow to all of them and when they
were driven from their beloved city, the Clark Family packed all of their possessions that
they could take with them an moved with the other Saints across Iowa to Council Bluffs,
where they bought a farm and also maintained and inn for about four years.  They were
very devout and truly believed that Brigham Young was called to take the place of the
martyred Prophet, Joseph Smith.  They were present in the Bowery meeting in Nauvoo
when the "Mantle of Joseph" had been observed to rest upon Brigham Young as he
addressed the grief-stricken Latter-Day Saint people.
 In the spring of 1849 the Richard Clarks sold their property and joined with a
company of the Saints including two of their married daughters and one son, as described
above, to make the trip across the plains to the Valley of the Great Salt Lake, traveling in
Captain Cook's Company.  The Cook Company arrived in Salt Lake City on September 3,
1850 and its members attended Conference on September 6th.  There were good reports
on possible farm lands in Utah Valley by William Adams and others.  It was not surprising,
therefore, that the Clarks, with George Sheffer in charge,  volunteered or were instructed
to go settle near the site where Adams an others had staked their land.  The Clarks and
their group of families set out shortly after Conference and reached the grove of
cottonwoods in the late afternoon of September 13, 1950.  The made camp and began to
build shelters and to clear land for log houses.  Elizabeth was glad to have her two
daughters and her daughter-in-law in the party and she helped the younger women to set
up their housekeeping.
 Elizabeth used her skills as a housekeeper and cook, a trained midwife and a
knowledgeable gardener to advantage.  She had carefully guarded large sacks of seeds all
the way across the plains and she meant to have a good garden the next year.  In keeping
with her practice of keeping an inn before coming to Utah, she now opened her home to
the Church Authorities who came to visit the settlement, and she busied herself with health
concerns in the new town.  It is said that hardly a birth occurred at which she did not
officiate during the rest of her life.  There were no doctors in the community and the
residents made good use of her capabilities.  Her garden prospered the first year and the
townspeople sought a few seeds of the particular kind of peas she grew.  Not only were
her vegetables good, but she planted and raised the first flower garden in the area and
many of the elderly people recalled during later years how beautiful her larkspur and other
plants appeared in the lot at her home, which stood directly across the street from the
Seminary Building at the Old High School site at Downtown City Park (the building now
being used by the city1989).
 After the fort was built in Pleasant Grove in the summer of 1853, most of the
settlers moved inside of the fort wall and Elizabeth, whose husband, Richard, died in
February of that year, moved the small house mentioned. She kept active in her garden
until her death on January 25, 1866.  She drove her own wagon while attending maternity
cases for many years, but later insisted that a man accompany her when she was needed
for cases of sickness or maternity.
Children of Richard and Ann Elizabeth Clark:
Margaret Ann Clark born about 1802, died as a child.  Phillip Vance Clark born about
1804, died as a child.  John Clark born 3 Sep 1806, Pennsylvania.  William Clark born 13
Nov 1808, Pennsylvania.  Jacob Clark born 26 Aug 1811, Pennsylvania.  Harriet Clark
born 24 May 1814, Pennsylvania.  George Sheffer Clark born 7 Nov 1816, Jefferson
County, Ohio.  Julia Ann Clark born 19 May 1819, Richland County, Ohio.  Clarinda
Clark born 18 Apr, 1824, Richland County, Ohio.  Lucinda Clark born 18 Apr, 1824,
Richland County, Ohio.  Nancy Clark born 26 Feb 1829, Marion, Indiana.