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Author: marjoriesmall1
Surnames: clarkson
Classification: queries
Message Board URL:
http://boards.rootsweb.com/surnames.clarkson/91.1.2.2.1/mb.ashx
Message Board Post:
hi my grandad was joesph clarkson brother of henry married to topsy gregson hope to hear from you soon marjorie
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Author: t42Vietnam_ParkerCoTX
Surnames: CLARKSON
Classification: military
Message Board URL:
http://boards.rootsweb.com/surnames.clarkson/715/mb.ashx
Message Board Post:
CLARKSON Jay O - Vietnam Wall section 11W
Honor our Veterans. This is one of many photographs of the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Parker Co, TX. Feel free to use this picture for your personal records. This is one of the 220,673 photos free at http://teafor2.com where they are listed in order by state(Texas), county(Parker), cemetery(Vietnam) and Surname.
If you know more about this person please reply here instead of contacting me because this is not my family.
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Ray
thanks for the nice response. I think this could be touchy ground for some, but, it is apparently the human condition.
There does seem to be a common feature to this though. The ladies tend to invest time in Genealogical pursuits, while the men go after the DNA side. I Think this may have to do with the fact that the ladies ALWAYS know who the father is ( and the child knows who the mother is) while the men are usually left guessing ( your grandfather died in the war" ... which is my case on my mothers side, and probably many others. I say, it does not matter a bit.
We ALL have a father, we just don't always know who ( even if we think we do)
As you have said, we have no matches to any other Clarkson, Clark, or soundex of it. On the other hand, my great grandfather was born at the Coldstream Guards barracks, at Buckingham Palace in 1851. I seem to have a coincidental match to a person in Gotha, germany. This may or not prove out, but it is well known that the Windsors and Coborg Gotha's had a problem keeping there pants on.
Great fun.
I might own some property in London ! :-)
Richard IV ( Clarkson)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ray Clarkson" <RayBear(a)dfn.com>
To: clarkson(a)rootsweb.com
Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2011 6:57:42 AM
Subject: Re: [CLARKSON] The Clarkson line runs back to the British and Saxon times of Alfred the Great and Edward the Confessor, the noblest and wisest of the Saxon kings; and also into Normandy, long before the daysof William.
Rich,
I could not agree with you more! My surname is "Clarkson", but I am a "Davidson" genetically. In fact, I match 66 out of 67 DYS markers with a Davidson testee., however I have never matched another Clarkson. Somewhere in my paternal line there was a Non Paternal Event. So my papertrail will have a disconnect somewhere and in the meantime I have ordered the 111 Y-DNA test to aid in finding where my branch diverged.
Thanks for the historical information.
Regards,
Ray Clarkson
-----Original Message-----
From: <r_clarkson(a)comcast.net>
Sent 4/12/2011 7:39:41 AM
To: clarkson(a)rootsweb.com
Subject: Re: [CLARKSON] The Clarkson line runs back to the British and Saxon times of Alfred the Great and Edward the Confessor, the noblest and wisest of the Saxon kings; and also into Normandy, long before the daysof William.
interesting article. My thoughts on the subject may represent what will become a more general view, at least as pertaining to surnames. What we are really doing here, is associating our own name to a PAPER trail, rather than an actual paternal line. I say this because it has been shown that illegitemacy rates are as high as 30% in a family, so the the probability of YOUR surname REALLY being your name is diminished quite a bit. Then we look at the fact that surnames came into existence in about the 1400's, so that also has an effect. Then we look at the fact that most names ( CLARKSON) reflect a trade, so that ANYONE in an English or French speaking world, who could read and write, or was Clergy, or a Stone Mason ( Claxon) would take on this name, related or not. So, a surname does NOT imply any relationship at all. What it does imply, is that perhaps one believes that the magic of sound and vibration in a name, creates some sort of influence on reality. I say this tongue in cheek, but, isn't that wha t we are really saying ? To get back to my original point, on a new general view of this, is to look at Y DNA... being that the paternal DNA we carry NOW, relates to our family line back to at least 200o years, and much earlier. It is sort of our new " Tartan" for a clan. In other words, what we are really doing in paper genealogy, is following a LEGAL paper trail "proving" our fathers line, which of course, it does not. It is strange that this paper trail is legal in court for proving these things, but a DNA test proves who a childs father REALLY is. Very strange. Just my thoughts on things. Rich Clarkson ----- Original Message ----- From: "l e" <lark.eagle(a)gmail.com> To: CLARKSON(a)rootsweb.com Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2011 5:22:10 AM Subject: [CLARKSON] The Clarkson line runs back to the British and Saxon times of Alfred the Great and Edward the Confessor, the noblest and wisest of the Saxon kings; and also into Normandy, long before the daysof William. History of political parties, national reminiscences, and the Tippecanoe ... By Dorus Morton Fox Nearly all men, and perhaps all men of personal power, have their idols among public leaders. Greatness in man is witness of God. Father Clarkson's pre-eminent heroes, who lived always deep in his heart, were first, Henry Ward Beecher the great premier friend that his own life touched so early in comradeship and sympathy; Henry Clay, who perhaps was loved and admired by him above all other men; Daniel Webster, with less of love but possibly greater admiration; and later, and beginning with Harrison's first candidacy for the presidency in 1836, William Henry Harrison, the nearer neighbor, and long time personal friend, for whose friendshtp he finally paid the costly price of opposing the ambitions and alienating the affections of both Clay and Webster. In after years his idols were Abraham Lincoln and General Grant, with both of whom he enjoyed intimate acquaintance, and both of whom when in the presidency availed themselves of his services for important public and secret services. Another leader he greatly loved was Bishop Simpson, the greatest of all the .Methodists, and long and closely his personal friend. Blaine he admired always, and in frequent visits that he had with him in the home of one of his own lamily in Des Moines learned to hold him in much affection a\so. But in all questions between Grant and Blaine, he always stood with the former. The later Harrison, in whose star he always believed, and whose election as president he had long predicted, was one of his accepted heroes, too. This was a hereditary friendship in large part. As Egyptian harps when found after three thousand years of burial and silence sound when their strings are touched, so did the heart of tin: Clarkson of 1835 respond when touched again bythesound of the Harrison name fifty-three years afterwards. Out of his and other veterans' love for the grandsire, and predisposition to the grandson, grew the Tippecanoe clubs of Iowa. The Scotch and English in his blood was proved by his quick rally to the name of Harrison, and by his doing so from public and historic motives rather than personal liking. It is an interesting fact, in proof that time is not so long, nor the world so very wide after all, that on English soil two hundred years before, theClarksons and the Harrisons had been in alliance, both families fighting under King Charles and Oliver Cromwell (the latter an ancestor of the American I larrisons ) on Marston Moor and at Naseby. In the later day, two hundred years after, it was simply old allies touching elbows again—and Father Clarkson was of the sturdy and loyal stuff to respond to such a sentiment. He had alwavs trained his family to revere the name of Harrison, and even before the later Harrison had been nominated in 1888, he frequently rated him as being a much abler but less lovable man than the first Harrison. A letter from him lies before me as I write, written in the summer of 1888, which shows how clearly and closely he analyzed men. It was in reply to a letter of mine, written while I was visiting Indianapolis, as a member of the Republican National committee, called there by the new nominee of the party, for conference and in response to an observation of mine, that I had found the new leader with a personality not nearly so winning as that of Blaine's and that "measured by the heart, it was a long way from Indianapolis to Augusta." His answer was: "It may be that the temperament of the later Harrison is such that he is not responsive to friendship, or moved by gratitude, and such that the men whose devotion and sacrifice gained him his nomination, and shall gain him his election, may be left to starve for want of bread. But it is also true that he will prove as able a president as the Republic has had, and that no stain will ever be left on the Nation or his party from any action of his." The evolution of temperament and temperature in the Harrison administration never surprised him in the least. His predictions were all fulfilled. No abler man in sheer personal power ever was president, and no president ever so lightly regarded the friendships and obligations of politics. This devotion in supporting a name and in loyally responding to tradition signally proved Father Clarkson's own nature. He supported a Harrison in 1836, and again in 1840, because he believed in the man; he supported a Harrison in 1888 because he believed in the blood. He never changed his friendship once it was given; he always sought to make it certain never to give it where it would have to incur the peril of a change. To him the code of honor among men of honor is never to lose a friend. His idols, and particularly the two men for whom he voted in National conventions Harrison and Lincoln — were all bitterly assailed at critical times in their careers. His faith never wavered, and his clear vision always saw the falsity of the charges that finally died harmless at the feet of the men against w hom they were aimed. This was the Puritan salt in his blood, and the finer English salt that saved him from the cowardice of ever abandoning a friend under fire. No slander of any private friend or public leader, however angry or pitiless, ever found in him an atom of craven or shrinking blood to respond to it. Not even the storm that played so fiercely about Beecher's proud name, and which largely carried conviction at last to the multitude, ever made himdoubt for a moment the honor of the friend of his youth. It was this staunch and invincible loyalty and unchangeability that guided and illumined his life. It was ingrained in the man; it was the man; and it was a nature that had come down to him in honest pedigree, running back in clear lines to the earliest days of England. *It is commonly said, and often with much of truth, that all families of actual English ancestry run back in blood if not in name to the days of William the Conqueror and of .Matilda, the first queen of England. The Clarkson line runs back by its own name and in the collateral lines to an even earlier day, or to the British and Saxon times of Alfred the Great and Edward the Confessor, the noblest and wisest of the Saxon kings; and also into Normandy, long before the daysof William. The onenotable thingin the wholecareer of the name has been a love of writing and letters. Its very name originated itself or was evolved out of Saxon terms, by the fact of its earliest known men of the name being clever and deft in reading and writing. In the early day a secretary or clerk was called a clark, and a dark's son easily became Clarkson, which was undoubtedly the origin of the name. It is one of the proudest traditions in the legends of the family, that even in the earliest days, when the only language was a dialect made up of provincial terms and arbitrary signs, and when the Anglo-Saxon ( or old English, as many may prefer to call it), was mingling with the old French into the more definite and stately form that flowered in Chaucer's splendid vocabulary, and in Walter Map's rich and beautiful stories of the Quest of the Holy Grail, and the Knights of the Round Table, two or three hundred years later, and when kings and queens even, often could not write and signed their name with the stamps of signet rings, that even then the representatives of the family had skill in speech and in expressing it in the forms of writing then in vogue. All through the centuries since this has been a characteristic of the people of this name, as the legends of the family attest, the skill in language and in writing quickly developing into a faculty for teaching, and sometimes for preaching. In the eighteenth century some of the family held chief places in schools and colleges, including Cambridge University. In the Wiesbach and Cambridge and Essex and Suffolk region, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries several noted men of this blood were produced, including among men of letters the famous abolitionist Thomas Clarkson, and quite a number of noted men of the name among shipping and seafaring people. About 1750 the family divided, the line out of which Father Clarkson came migrating to the region of Cornwall, drawn there by an interest in the tin mines.** Some of the Clarksons of collateral lines had come to America in 1700 or earlier, with the later Puritans, and one of this branch was Captain James Clarkson, who marched with Arnold from Maine through the woods into Canada in the Revolutionary War*. The first Clarkson of Father Clarkson's own line to come to America was his grandfather, who came first as a lieutenant-colonel in the English army, in 1775, who was wounded seriously in the battle of Bunker Hill; was then sent back to England, where he at once resigned and came immediately to America in 1777, to adopt it as a home. He had married, on leaving England, a daughter of the Perkinhons (now often called in England Pulkinghorn), the English family of celebrated wealth and still largely the owners of the Cornwall mines. She was a lady of great beauty and much spirit, who married the army officer against the will of her parents, leaving the ancestral home at night, and being married the next morning on shipboard, as the vessel was leaving the harbor at Yarmouth. She never was forgiven by them; her letters to them were never answered, and this silence between the families has now remained unbroken nearly one hundred and twenty years. The young people who had thus angered and alienated their English fortunes by coming to America landed at or near Newbury port, lived a while at Salem and Hampton and Rye Heach, but soon removed to Stratham, now a suburb of Exeter, New Hampshire, where a son (the father of Father Clarkson ) was born, and who was named Richard Perkinhon Clarkson, for the two grandfathers, a name which has always been preserved in the family, and is duplicated in that of the present owner and editor of the *Iou*a State Register. *Here Colonel Clarkson and Eleanor Perkinhon lived and died, and their bodies are buried in the cemetery at Stratford. When the young Richard Clarkson, the first native American Clarkson, born in 1779, had grown up to manhood, he married Mary Simpson, whose father had descended from the early Puritans, had been an officer in the Continental army, and had fought at Bunker Hill, and moved to Maine, then a part of Massachusetts, not becoming a State until 1820. Here Father Clarkson was born at Dixmont. near Bangor, in 1811. The family left its fighting mark as a tradition in that region; and in 1892, when Cleveland was elected over Harrison, the Democrats of Bangor drew their cannon to the top of Clarkson Hill to fire it, thereby adding to the emphasis of their joy because of the historic connection between the Harrison and Clarkson families. The Clarksons were of Puritan faith, Mary Simpson represented a Baptist departure from Puritan faith, and on these two faiths mingled the family altar was established and kept until Father Clarkson, fifteen years old, in Indiana embraced Methodism. At twenty-one he married Elizabeth Goudie, whose father, James Goudie, was a Presbyterian of the strictest sect (and who was prominent in Indiana politics as a Whig, being several times speaker of the Indiana legislature). His daughter, Elizabeth, although married to a Methodist, proved staunch to her faith and lived and died a Presbyterian. It may be of interest to add, in speaking of a family which has never courted military fame, that while the Clarksons were nearly always engaged in the peaceful lines of schools, letters, commerce and sea-going, the traditions of the name show that it always had good men on guard on every field where their country needed them. Representatives of the family stood with the Saxons for the Saxons in the battle of Hastings, where William the Norman won his title of Conqueror and the rule of England. In the two hundred years of French rulers over England, all of whom sought to fasten the French language on the country as its legitimate speech, the Clarksons were with those of Saxon and English blood who refused to adopt the alien tongue. They were also among the yeomanry that in the thirteenth century stood in the meadow at Runymede and with English will and courage aided in wresting from King John, the meanest of all English sovereigns, the immortal Magna Charta, the first charter of individual liberty in the modern world. In the fourteenth century they were at Bannockburn, and some were among the thirty thousand good Englishmen killed there by the infuriate Scotch, and others were in King Edward's armies that finally defeated Wallace, and indeed they were throughout the war of such varying fortune that finally ended in Robert Bruce being crowned king of Scotland in the Abbey of Scone. During or after this war, some of the Clarksons who, while in Scotland had become enchanted with some of the Scottish lasses, intermarried with the Alexanders and the Mackenzies, the old story of the conquest of love overcoming those of war. Some of them were also in France on the field of Crecey, where Edward the Third, with thirty thousand Englishmen, defeated Phillip the Sixth and eighty thousand Frenchmen. Others of them in the same year fought at Neville's Cross, where the English were led by a queen, the beautiful Phillippa. In the latter years the ancestors of Father Clarkson, always true Englishmen, fond of peace but not afraid of war, bore their part in all the later conquests and warfares of the kingdom, including historic Flodden Field in the sixteenth century. In the religious wars under Mary, some of the family were living in the region of Smithfield, where so many Protestants were burned, and in these and all other religious contests the Clarksons were always Protestants. Particularly in the more cruel and bloody days, and especially when Mary was so cruel to the Protestants of England, and later when Catherine Medici, in France, was slaying the Huguenots, and Elizabeth of England, although Protestant herself, never protesting, did the Clarksons fail to leave a good record on the right side. The family has never had too much of tolerance, and has had its share of bigots, but it never quite believed, even in the earlier days, in killing people to save their souls. In the middle of the seventeenth century, in the days of Charles I. and Cromwell, and in the turbulent wrangles between the Puritans, Presbyterians and the other Protestants, and in the mad days of burning books and their authors, Lawrence Clarkson and his book (which was called *Single Eye: All Light, no Darkness,) *were, in September, 1650, condemned by the Long Parliament, the book to be burned by the hangman, which was done, and Clarkson imprisoned for one month and officially notified that he would be burned himself if he reissued his book. True Clarkson and Puritan that he was, he reissued the book as soon as he was out of prison, and then was banished from England for life after having S. S. (Sower of Sedition) burned on both his cheeks. It was only in his later years that Father Clarkson took much interest in pedigree or ancestry. He had been affected in his boyhood by the universal feeling then existing in America, and for many years after the Revolution, to ignore, and if possible to forget all English ancestors a result of the intense hatred of England. He also always had the most respect for any man who had made his own name good or great. But latterly it was natural enough that his exploring mind should reach out finally to learn something of the Clarksons of the long past. This work that he began I was left to take up, and in a visit to England in 1891, I found that the annals of the family were definite and clear as one of the oldest families in England. Indeed, Playford Hall, one of houses of the English Clarksons, in which Thomas Clarkson died, and near which, in a quiet churchyard, his body, surrounded by many of the Clarksons, is buried, is now the oldest fortified house left standing in England. It is in Suffolk, near Ipswich, not far inland from the North Sea. Suffolk and Cambridge and Norfolk and Essex, adjoining Suffolk, have been the homes of the Clarksons for four or five hundred years. The house is still surrounded by a moat, with no access except by a drawbridge. It is a grim house of solid stone, peculiarly English, and is still owned by the Clarksons. In 1891 when I was in Liverpool, the place was pointed out to me on the dock where Thomas Clarkson was thrown into the sea by a mob, to prevent him from finishing an anti-slavery speech. He swam out, faced the mob again, and finished his speech. In this sketch is given a picture of Playford Hall, the earliest home of the Clarksons of which the family has even a sketch. Harriet Beecher Stowe, who in 1852, six years after Thomas Clarkson's death, visited Playford Hall to pay her worship at the shrine of the great abolitionist, once told me of the visit, and showed me a copy of his famous seal afterwards adopted as the seal of the abolition cause. It was a cameo made by Wedgewood, the celebrated porcelain manufacturer, and bore the kneeling figure of a negro slave, with arms uplifted, praying for freedom. Mrs. Stowe had gained this memento from the widow of the famous man, and held it in very precious esteem. Frederick Douglass, the greatest of his race, once told me that he had visited Playford Hall and Clarkson's grave three times to pay the respects of his race and his people to the man who first seriously attacked in English words the inhumanity of human slavery. http://books.google.com/books?id=LQ0vAAAAYAAJ&dq=origin%20of%20name%20cla... The general proposition that freedom of expression upon public questions is secured by the First Amendment has long been settled by our decisions. The constitutional safeguard, we have said, "was fashioned to assure unfettered interchange of ideas for the bringing about of political and social changes desired by the people." Roth v. United States, 354 U. S. 476, 484. *"[I]t is a prized American privilege to speak one's mind, although not always with perfect good taste, on all public institutions," Bridges v. California, 314 U. S. 252, 270, and this opportunity is to be afforded for "vigorous advocacy" no less than "abstract discussion." * N. A. A. C. P. v. Button, 371 U. S. 415, 429.270*270 The First Amendment, said Judge Learned Hand*,"presupposes that right conclusions are more likely to be gathered out of a multitude of tongues, than through any kind of authoritative selection. To many this is, and always will be, folly; but we have staked upon it our all." Researcher for Hire (206-338-5964) *Notice: The information contained in this email and its attachments is CONFIDENTIAL and intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copy of this communication is strictly PROHIBITED and will be considered a tortuous interference in our confidential business relationships. Additionally, unauthorized dissemination of this confidential information subjects you to criminal and civil penalties. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by email, and delete the original message. When emailing me and I am on your mail list, please put my email in the BCC Line, as this protects from much email spam CLARKSON-L (rootsweb.com) Please include your family line with your messages. List contact: Mary Buchholz marybucholz516@gmail"dot"com (CLARKSON,1749 England>Essex Co VA > WV > SD) ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to CLARKSON-request(a)rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message CLARKSON-L (rootsweb.com) Please include your family line with your messages. List contact: Mary Buchholz marybucholz516@gmail"dot"com (CLARKSON,1749 England>Essex Co VA > WV > SD) ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to CLARKSON-request(a)rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message
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Interesting to note that one of my Clarkson ancestors, Charles Smith Clarkson, campaigned for William Henry Harrison in Ohio and was one of the "prominent men of Cincinnati" who traveled to Washington to attend Harrison's inauguration--only later to be one of the men chosen to accompany Harrison's body back to Cincinnati.
Thnx,
Nancy B.
-----Original Message-----
From: l e <lark.eagle(a)gmail.com>
To: CLARKSON <CLARKSON(a)rootsweb.com>
Sent: Tue, Apr 12, 2011 8:35 am
Subject: [CLARKSON] The Clarkson line runs back to the British and Saxon times of Alfred the Great and Edward the Confessor, the noblest and wisest of the Saxon kings; and also into Normandy, long before the daysof William.
History of political parties, national reminiscences, and the Tippecanoe
...
By Dorus Morton Fox
Nearly all men, and perhaps all men of personal power, have their idols
among public leaders. Greatness in man is witness of God. Father Clarkson's
pre-eminent heroes, who lived always deep in his heart, were first, Henry
Ward Beecher the great premier friend that his own life touched so early in
comradeship and sympathy; Henry Clay, who perhaps was loved and admired by
him above all other men; Daniel Webster, with less of love but possibly
greater admiration; and later, and beginning with Harrison's first candidacy
for the presidency in 1836, William Henry Harrison, the nearer neighbor, and
long time personal friend, for whose friendshtp he finally paid the costly
price of opposing the ambitions and alienating the affections of both Clay
and Webster. In after years his idols were Abraham Lincoln and General
Grant, with both of whom he enjoyed intimate acquaintance, and both of whom
when in the presidency availed themselves of his services for important
public and secret services. Another leader he greatly loved was Bishop
Simpson, the greatest of all the .Methodists, and long and closely his
personal friend. Blaine he admired always, and in frequent visits that he
had with him in the home of one of his own lamily in Des Moines learned to
hold him in much affection a\so. But in all questions between Grant and
Blaine, he always stood with the former. The later Harrison, in whose star
he always believed, and whose election as president he had long predicted,
was one of his accepted heroes, too. This was a hereditary friendship in
large part. As Egyptian harps when found after three thousand years of
burial and silence sound when their strings are touched, so did the heart of
tin: Clarkson of 1835 respond when touched again bythesound of the
Harrison name
fifty-three years afterwards. Out of his and other veterans' love for the
grandsire, and predisposition to the grandson, grew the Tippecanoe clubs of
Iowa. The Scotch and English in his blood was proved by his quick rally to
the name of Harrison, and by his doing so from public and historic motives
rather than personal liking. It is an interesting fact, in proof that time
is not so long, nor the world so very wide after all, that on English soil
two hundred years before, theClarksons and the Harrisons had been in
alliance, both families fighting under King Charles and Oliver Cromwell (the
latter an ancestor of the American I larrisons ) on Marston Moor and at
Naseby. In the later day, two hundred years after, it was simply old allies
touching elbows again—and Father Clarkson was of the sturdy and loyal stuff
to respond to such a sentiment. He had alwavs trained his family to revere
the name of Harrison, and even before the later Harrison had been nominated
in 1888, he frequently rated him as being a much abler but less lovable man
than the first Harrison. A letter from him lies before me as I write,
written in the summer of 1888, which shows how clearly and closely he
analyzed men. It was in reply to a letter of mine, written while I was
visiting Indianapolis, as a member of the Republican National committee,
called there by the new nominee of the party, for conference and in response
to an observation of mine, that I had found the new leader with a
personality not nearly so winning as that of Blaine's and that "measured by
the heart, it was a long way from Indianapolis to Augusta." His answer was:
"It may be that the temperament of the later Harrison is such that he is not
responsive to friendship, or moved by gratitude, and such that the men whose
devotion and sacrifice gained him his nomination, and shall gain him his
election, may be left to starve for want of bread. But it is also true that
he will prove as able a president as the Republic has had, and that no stain
will ever be left on the Nation or his party from any action of his." The
evolution of temperament and temperature in the Harrison administration
never surprised him in the least. His predictions were all fulfilled. No
abler man in sheer personal power ever was president, and no president ever
so lightly regarded the friendships and obligations of politics.
This devotion in supporting a name and in loyally responding to tradition
signally proved Father Clarkson's own nature. He supported a Harrison in
1836, and again in 1840, because he believed in the man; he supported a
Harrison in 1888 because he believed in the blood. He never changed his
friendship once it was given; he always sought to make it certain never to
give it where it would have to incur the peril of a change. To him the code
of honor among men of honor is never to lose a friend. His idols, and
particularly the two men for whom he voted in National conventions Harrison
and Lincoln — were all bitterly assailed at critical times in their careers.
His faith never wavered, and his clear vision always saw the falsity of the
charges that finally died harmless at the feet of the men against w hom they
were aimed. This was the Puritan salt in his blood, and the finer English
salt that saved him from the cowardice of ever abandoning a friend under
fire. No slander of any private friend or public leader, however angry or
pitiless, ever found in him an atom of craven or shrinking blood to respond
to it. Not even the storm that played so fiercely about Beecher's proud name,
and which largely carried conviction at last to the multitude, ever
made himdoubt for a moment the honor of the friend of his youth. It
was this staunch
and invincible loyalty and unchangeability that guided and illumined his
life. It was ingrained in the man; it was the man; and it was a nature that
had come down to him in honest pedigree, running back in clear lines to the
earliest days of England.
*It is commonly said, and often with much of truth, that all families of
actual English ancestry run back in blood if not in name to the days of
William the Conqueror and of .Matilda, the first queen of England. The Clarkson
line runs back by its own name and in the collateral lines to an even
earlier day, or to the British and Saxon times of Alfred the Great and
Edward the Confessor, the noblest and wisest of the Saxon kings; and also
into Normandy, long before the daysof William. The onenotable thingin the
wholecareer of the name has been a love of writing and letters. Its very name
originated itself or was evolved out of Saxon terms, by the fact of its
earliest known men of the name being clever and deft in reading and writing.
In the early day a secretary or clerk was called a clark, and a dark's
son easily
became Clarkson, which was undoubtedly the origin of the name. It is one of
the proudest traditions in the legends of the family, that even in the
earliest days, when the only language was a dialect made up of provincial
terms and arbitrary signs, and when the Anglo-Saxon ( or old English, as
many may prefer to call it), was mingling with the old French into the more
definite and stately form that flowered in Chaucer's splendid vocabulary,
and in Walter Map's rich and beautiful stories of the Quest of the Holy
Grail, and the Knights of the Round Table, two or three hundred years later,
and when kings and queens even, often could not write and signed their
name with
the stamps of signet rings, that even then the representatives of the family
had skill in speech and in expressing it in the forms of writing then in
vogue. All through the centuries since this has been a characteristic of the
people of this name, as the legends of the family attest, the skill in
language and in writing quickly developing into a faculty for teaching, and
sometimes for preaching. In the eighteenth century some of the family held
chief places in schools and colleges, including Cambridge University. In the
Wiesbach and Cambridge and Essex and Suffolk region, in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries several noted men of this blood were produced,
including among men of letters the famous abolitionist Thomas Clarkson, and
quite a number of noted men of the name among shipping and seafaring people.
About 1750 the family divided, the line out of which Father Clarkson came
migrating to the region of Cornwall, drawn there by an interest in the tin
mines.** Some of the Clarksons of collateral lines had come to America in
1700 or earlier, with the later Puritans, and one of this branch was Captain
James Clarkson, who marched with Arnold from Maine through the woods into
Canada in the Revolutionary War*. The first Clarkson of Father Clarkson's
own line to come to America was his grandfather, who came first as a
lieutenant-colonel in the English army, in 1775, who was wounded seriously
in the battle of Bunker Hill; was then sent back to England, where he at
once resigned and came immediately to America in 1777, to adopt it as a
home. He had married, on leaving England, a daughter of the Perkinhons (now
often called in England Pulkinghorn), the English family of celebrated
wealth and still largely the owners of the Cornwall mines. She was a lady of
great beauty and much spirit, who married the army officer against the will
of her parents, leaving the ancestral home at night, and being married the
next morning on shipboard, as the vessel was leaving the harbor at Yarmouth.
She never was forgiven by them; her letters to them were never answered, and
this silence between the families has now remained unbroken nearly one
hundred and twenty years. The young people who had thus angered and
alienated their English fortunes by coming to America landed at or near
Newbury port, lived a while at Salem and Hampton and Rye Heach, but soon
removed to Stratham, now a suburb of Exeter, New Hampshire, where a son (the
father of Father Clarkson ) was born, and who was named Richard
Perkinhon Clarkson,
for the two grandfathers, a name which has always been preserved in the
family, and is duplicated in that of the present owner and editor of the *Iou*a
State Register. *Here Colonel Clarkson and Eleanor Perkinhon lived and died,
and their bodies are buried in the cemetery at Stratford. When the young
Richard Clarkson, the first native American Clarkson, born in 1779, had
grown up to manhood, he married Mary Simpson, whose father had descended
from the early Puritans, had been an officer in the Continental army, and
had fought at Bunker Hill, and moved to Maine, then a part of Massachusetts,
not becoming a State until 1820. Here Father Clarkson was born at Dixmont.
near Bangor, in 1811. The family left its fighting mark as a tradition in
that region; and in 1892, when Cleveland was elected over Harrison, the
Democrats of Bangor drew their cannon to the top of Clarkson Hill to fire
it, thereby adding to the emphasis of their joy because of the historic
connection between the Harrison and Clarkson families.
The Clarksons were of Puritan faith, Mary Simpson represented a Baptist
departure from Puritan faith, and on these two faiths mingled the family
altar was established and kept until Father Clarkson, fifteen years old, in
Indiana embraced Methodism. At twenty-one he married Elizabeth Goudie, whose
father, James Goudie, was a Presbyterian of the strictest sect (and who was
prominent in Indiana politics as a Whig, being several times speaker of the
Indiana legislature). His daughter, Elizabeth, although married to a
Methodist, proved staunch to her faith and lived and died a Presbyterian.
It may be of interest to add, in speaking of a family which has never
courted military fame, that while the Clarksons were nearly always engaged
in the peaceful lines of schools, letters, commerce and sea-going, the
traditions of the name show that it always had good men on guard on every
field where their country needed them. Representatives of the family stood
with the Saxons for the Saxons in the battle of Hastings, where William the
Norman won his title of Conqueror and the rule of England. In the two
hundred years of French rulers over England, all of whom sought to fasten
the French language on the country as its legitimate speech, the Clarksons
were with those of Saxon and English blood who refused to adopt the alien
tongue. They were also among the yeomanry that in the thirteenth century
stood in the meadow at Runymede and with English will and courage aided in
wresting from King John, the meanest of all English sovereigns, the immortal
Magna Charta, the first charter of individual liberty in the modern world.
In the fourteenth century they were at Bannockburn, and some were among the
thirty thousand good Englishmen killed there by the infuriate Scotch, and
others were in King Edward's armies that finally defeated Wallace, and
indeed they were throughout the war of such varying fortune that finally
ended in Robert Bruce being crowned king of Scotland in the Abbey of Scone.
During or after this war, some of the Clarksons who, while in Scotland had
become enchanted with some of the Scottish lasses, intermarried with the
Alexanders and the Mackenzies, the old story of the conquest of love
overcoming those of war. Some of them were also in France on the field of
Crecey, where Edward the Third, with thirty thousand Englishmen, defeated
Phillip the Sixth and eighty thousand Frenchmen. Others of them in the same
year fought at Neville's Cross, where the English were led by a queen, the
beautiful Phillippa. In the latter years the ancestors of Father
Clarkson, always
true Englishmen, fond of peace but not afraid of war, bore their part in all
the later conquests and warfares of the kingdom, including historic Flodden
Field in the sixteenth century. In the religious wars under Mary, some of
the family were living in the region of Smithfield, where so many
Protestants
were burned, and in these and all other religious contests the Clarksons
were always Protestants. Particularly in the more cruel and bloody days, and
especially when Mary was so cruel to the Protestants of England, and later
when Catherine Medici, in France, was slaying the Huguenots, and Elizabeth
of England, although Protestant herself, never protesting, did the Clarksons
fail to leave a good record on the right side. The family has never had too
much of tolerance, and has had its share of bigots, but it never quite
believed, even in the earlier days, in killing people to save their souls.
In the middle of the seventeenth century, in the days of Charles I. and
Cromwell, and in the turbulent wrangles between the Puritans, Presbyterians
and the other Protestants, and in the mad days of burning books and their
authors, Lawrence Clarkson and his book (which was called *Single Eye: All
Light, no Darkness,) *were, in September, 1650, condemned by the Long
Parliament, the book to be burned by the hangman, which was done, and Clarkson
imprisoned for one month and officially notified that he would be burned
himself if he reissued his book. True Clarkson and Puritan that he was, he
reissued the book as soon as he was out of prison, and then was banished
from England for life after having S. S. (Sower of Sedition) burned on both
his cheeks.
It was only in his later years that Father Clarkson took much interest in
pedigree or ancestry. He had been affected in his boyhood by the universal
feeling then existing in America, and for many years after the Revolution,
to ignore, and if possible to forget all English ancestors a result of the
intense hatred of England. He also always had the most respect for any man
who had made his own name good or great. But latterly it was natural enough
that his exploring mind should reach out finally to learn something of the
Clarksons of the long past. This work that he began I was left to take up,
and in a visit to England in 1891, I found that the annals of the family
were definite and clear as one of the oldest families in England. Indeed,
Playford Hall, one of houses of the English Clarksons, in which Thomas Clarkson
died, and near which, in a quiet churchyard, his body, surrounded by many of
the Clarksons, is buried, is now the oldest fortified house left standing in
England. It is in Suffolk, near Ipswich, not far inland from the North Sea.
Suffolk and Cambridge and Norfolk and Essex, adjoining Suffolk, have been
the homes of the Clarksons for four or five hundred years. The house is
still surrounded by a moat, with no access except by a drawbridge. It is a
grim house of solid stone, peculiarly English, and is still owned by the
Clarksons. In 1891 when I was in Liverpool, the place was pointed out to me
on the dock where Thomas Clarkson was thrown into the sea by a mob, to
prevent him from finishing an anti-slavery speech. He swam out, faced the
mob again, and finished his speech. In this sketch is given a picture of
Playford Hall, the earliest home of the Clarksons of which the family has
even a sketch. Harriet Beecher Stowe, who in 1852, six years after Thomas
Clarkson's death, visited Playford Hall to pay her worship at the shrine of
the great abolitionist, once told me of the visit, and showed me a copy of
his famous seal afterwards adopted as the seal of the abolition cause. It
was a cameo made by Wedgewood, the celebrated porcelain manufacturer, and
bore the kneeling figure of a negro slave, with arms uplifted, praying for
freedom. Mrs. Stowe had gained this memento from the widow of the famous
man, and held it in very precious esteem. Frederick Douglass, the greatest
of his race, once told me that he had visited Playford Hall and Clarkson's
grave three times to pay the respects of his race and his people to the man
who first seriously attacked in English words the inhumanity of human
slavery.
http://books.google.com/books?id=LQ0vAAAAYAAJ&dq=origin%20of%20name%20cla...
The general proposition that freedom of expression upon public questions is
secured by the First Amendment has long been settled by our decisions.
The constitutional safeguard, we have said, "was fashioned to assure
unfettered interchange of ideas for the bringing about of political and
social changes desired by the people."
Roth v. United States, 354 U. S. 476, 484.
*"[I]t is a prized American privilege to speak one's mind, although not
always with perfect good taste, on all public institutions," Bridges v.
California, 314 U. S. 252, 270, and this opportunity is to be afforded for
"vigorous advocacy" no less than "abstract discussion."
*
N. A. A. C. P. v. Button, 371 U. S. 415, 429.270*270 The First Amendment,
said Judge Learned Hand*,"presupposes that right conclusions are more likely
to be gathered out of a multitude of tongues, than through any kind of
authoritative selection. To many this is, and always will be, folly;
but we have staked upon it our all."
Researcher for Hire (206-338-5964)
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Rich,
I could not agree with you more! My surname is "Clarkson", but I am a "Davidson" genetically. In fact, I match 66 out of 67 DYS markers with a Davidson testee., however I have never matched another Clarkson. Somewhere in my paternal line there was a Non Paternal Event. So my papertrail will have a disconnect somewhere and in the meantime I have ordered the 111 Y-DNA test to aid in finding where my branch diverged.
Thanks for the historical information.
Regards,
Ray Clarkson
-----Original Message-----
From: <r_clarkson(a)comcast.net>
Sent 4/12/2011 7:39:41 AM
To: clarkson(a)rootsweb.com
Subject: Re: [CLARKSON] The Clarkson line runs back to the British and Saxon times of Alfred the Great and Edward the Confessor, the noblest and wisest of the Saxon kings; and also into Normandy, long before the daysof William.
interesting article. My thoughts on the subject may represent what will become a more general view, at least as pertaining to surnames. What we are really doing here, is associating our own name to a PAPER trail, rather than an actual paternal line. I say this because it has been shown that illegitemacy rates are as high as 30% in a family, so the the probability of YOUR surname REALLY being your name is diminished quite a bit. Then we look at the fact that surnames came into existence in about the 1400's, so that also has an effect. Then we look at the fact that most names ( CLARKSON) reflect a trade, so that ANYONE in an English or French speaking world, who could read and write, or was Clergy, or a Stone Mason ( Claxon) would take on this name, related or not. So, a surname does NOT imply any relationship at all. What it does imply, is that perhaps one believes that the magic of sound and vibration in a name, creates some sort of influence on reality. I say this tongue in cheek, but, isn't that wha t we are really saying ? To get back to my original point, on a new general view of this, is to look at Y DNA... being that the paternal DNA we carry NOW, relates to our family line back to at least 200o years, and much earlier. It is sort of our new " Tartan" for a clan. In other words, what we are really doing in paper genealogy, is following a LEGAL paper trail "proving" our fathers line, which of course, it does not. It is strange that this paper trail is legal in court for proving these things, but a DNA test proves who a childs father REALLY is. Very strange. Just my thoughts on things. Rich Clarkson ----- Original Message ----- From: "l e" <lark.eagle(a)gmail.com> To: CLARKSON(a)rootsweb.com Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2011 5:22:10 AM Subject: [CLARKSON] The Clarkson line runs back to the British and Saxon times of Alfred the Great and Edward the Confessor, the noblest and wisest of the Saxon kings; and also into Normandy, long before the daysof William. History of political parties, national reminiscences, and the
Tippecanoe ... By Dorus Morton Fox Nearly all men, and perhaps all men of personal power, have their idols among public leaders. Greatness in man is witness of God. Father Clarkson's pre-eminent heroes, who lived always deep in his heart, were first, Henry Ward Beecher the great premier friend that his own life touched so early in comradeship and sympathy; Henry Clay, who perhaps was loved and admired by him above all other men; Daniel Webster, with less of love but possibly greater admiration; and later, and beginning with Harrison's first candidacy for the presidency in 1836, William Henry Harrison, the nearer neighbor, and long time personal friend, for whose friendshtp he finally paid the costly price of opposing the ambitions and alienating the affections of both Clay and Webster. In after years his idols were Abraham Lincoln and General Grant, with both of whom he enjoyed intimate acquaintance, and both of whom when in the presidency availed themselves of his services for important public and secret services. Another leader he greatly loved was Bishop Simpson, the greatest of all the .Methodists, and long and closely his personal friend. Blaine he admired always, and in frequent visits that he had with him in the home of one of his own lamily in Des Moines learned to hold him in much affection a\so. But in all questions between Grant and Blaine, he always stood with the former. The later Harrison, in whose star he always believed, and whose election as president he had long predicted, was one of his accepted heroes, too. This was a hereditary friendship in large part. As Egyptian harps when found after three thousand years of burial and silence sound when their strings are touched, so did the heart of tin: Clarkson of 1835 respond when touched again bythesound of the Harrison name fifty-three years afterwards. Out of his and other veterans' love for the grandsire, and predisposition to the grandson, grew the Tippecanoe clubs of Iowa. The Scotch and English in his blood was proved by his quick rally to the n
ame of Harrison, and by his doing so from public and historic motives rather than personal liking. It is an interesting fact, in proof that time is not so long, nor the world so very wide after all, that on English soil two hundred years before, theClarksons and the Harrisons had been in alliance, both families fighting under King Charles and Oliver Cromwell (the latter an ancestor of the American I larrisons ) on Marston Moor and at Naseby. In the later day, two hundred years after, it was simply old allies touching elbows again—and Father Clarkson was of the sturdy and loyal stuff to respond to such a sentiment. He had alwavs trained his family to revere the name of Harrison, and even before the later Harrison had been nominated in 1888, he frequently rated him as being a much abler but less lovable man than the first Harrison. A letter from him lies before me as I write, written in the summer of 1888, which shows how clearly and closely he analyzed men. It was in reply to a letter of mine, written while I was visiting Indianapolis, as a member of the Republican National committee, called there by the new nominee of the party, for conference and in response to an observation of mine, that I had found the new leader with a personality not nearly so winning as that of Blaine's and that "measured by the heart, it was a long way from Indianapolis to Augusta." His answer was: "It may be that the temperament of the later Harrison is such that he is not responsive to friendship, or moved by gratitude, and such that the men whose devotion and sacrifice gained him his nomination, and shall gain him his election, may be left to starve for want of bread. But it is also true that he will prove as able a president as the Republic has had, and that no stain will ever be left on the Nation or his party from any action of his." The evolution of temperament and temperature in the Harrison administration never surprised him in the least. His predictions were all fulfilled. No abler man in sheer personal power ever was presiden
t, and no president ever so lightly regarded the friendships and obligations of politics. This devotion in supporting a name and in loyally responding to tradition signally proved Father Clarkson's own nature. He supported a Harrison in 1836, and again in 1840, because he believed in the man; he supported a Harrison in 1888 because he believed in the blood. He never changed his friendship once it was given; he always sought to make it certain never to give it where it would have to incur the peril of a change. To him the code of honor among men of honor is never to lose a friend. His idols, and particularly the two men for whom he voted in National conventions Harrison and Lincoln — were all bitterly assailed at critical times in their careers. His faith never wavered, and his clear vision always saw the falsity of the charges that finally died harmless at the feet of the men against w hom they were aimed. This was the Puritan salt in his blood, and the finer English salt that saved him from the cowardice of ever abandoning a friend under fire. No slander of any private friend or public leader, however angry or pitiless, ever found in him an atom of craven or shrinking blood to respond to it. Not even the storm that played so fiercely about Beecher's proud name, and which largely carried conviction at last to the multitude, ever made himdoubt for a moment the honor of the friend of his youth. It was this staunch and invincible loyalty and unchangeability that guided and illumined his life. It was ingrained in the man; it was the man; and it was a nature that had come down to him in honest pedigree, running back in clear lines to the earliest days of England. *It is commonly said, and often with much of truth, that all families of actual English ancestry run back in blood if not in name to the days of William the Conqueror and of .Matilda, the first queen of England. The Clarkson line runs back by its own name and in the collateral lines to an even earlier day, or to the British and Saxon times of Alfred the Gre
at and Edward the Confessor, the noblest and wisest of the Saxon kings; and also into Normandy, long before the daysof William. The onenotable thingin the wholecareer of the name has been a love of writing and letters. Its very name originated itself or was evolved out of Saxon terms, by the fact of its earliest known men of the name being clever and deft in reading and writing. In the early day a secretary or clerk was called a clark, and a dark's son easily became Clarkson, which was undoubtedly the origin of the name. It is one of the proudest traditions in the legends of the family, that even in the earliest days, when the only language was a dialect made up of provincial terms and arbitrary signs, and when the Anglo-Saxon ( or old English, as many may prefer to call it), was mingling with the old French into the more definite and stately form that flowered in Chaucer's splendid vocabulary, and in Walter Map's rich and beautiful stories of the Quest of the Holy Grail, and the Knights of the Round Table, two or three hundred years later, and when kings and queens even, often could not write and signed their name with the stamps of signet rings, that even then the representatives of the family had skill in speech and in expressing it in the forms of writing then in vogue. All through the centuries since this has been a characteristic of the people of this name, as the legends of the family attest, the skill in language and in writing quickly developing into a faculty for teaching, and sometimes for preaching. In the eighteenth century some of the family held chief places in schools and colleges, including Cambridge University. In the Wiesbach and Cambridge and Essex and Suffolk region, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries several noted men of this blood were produced, including among men of letters the famous abolitionist Thomas Clarkson, and quite a number of noted men of the name among shipping and seafaring people. About 1750 the family divided, the line out of which Father Clarkson came migrating to
the region of Cornwall, drawn there by an interest in the tin mines.** Some of the Clarksons of collateral lines had come to America in 1700 or earlier, with the later Puritans, and one of this branch was Captain James Clarkson, who marched with Arnold from Maine through the woods into Canada in the Revolutionary War*. The first Clarkson of Father Clarkson's own line to come to America was his grandfather, who came first as a lieutenant-colonel in the English army, in 1775, who was wounded seriously in the battle of Bunker Hill; was then sent back to England, where he at once resigned and came immediately to America in 1777, to adopt it as a home. He had married, on leaving England, a daughter of the Perkinhons (now often called in England Pulkinghorn), the English family of celebrated wealth and still largely the owners of the Cornwall mines. She was a lady of great beauty and much spirit, who married the army officer against the will of her parents, leaving the ancestral home at night, and being married the next morning on shipboard, as the vessel was leaving the harbor at Yarmouth. She never was forgiven by them; her letters to them were never answered, and this silence between the families has now remained unbroken nearly one hundred and twenty years. The young people who had thus angered and alienated their English fortunes by coming to America landed at or near Newbury port, lived a while at Salem and Hampton and Rye Heach, but soon removed to Stratham, now a suburb of Exeter, New Hampshire, where a son (the father of Father Clarkson ) was born, and who was named Richard Perkinhon Clarkson, for the two grandfathers, a name which has always been preserved in the family, and is duplicated in that of the present owner and editor of the *Iou*a State Register. *Here Colonel Clarkson and Eleanor Perkinhon lived and died, and their bodies are buried in the cemetery at Stratford. When the young Richard Clarkson, the first native American Clarkson, born in 1779, had grown up to manhood, he married Mary Simpson, whos
e father had descended from the early Puritans, had been an officer in the Continental army, and had fought at Bunker Hill, and moved to Maine, then a part of Massachusetts, not becoming a State until 1820. Here Father Clarkson was born at Dixmont. near Bangor, in 1811. The family left its fighting mark as a tradition in that region; and in 1892, when Cleveland was elected over Harrison, the Democrats of Bangor drew their cannon to the top of Clarkson Hill to fire it, thereby adding to the emphasis of their joy because of the historic connection between the Harrison and Clarkson families. The Clarksons were of Puritan faith, Mary Simpson represented a Baptist departure from Puritan faith, and on these two faiths mingled the family altar was established and kept until Father Clarkson, fifteen years old, in Indiana embraced Methodism. At twenty-one he married Elizabeth Goudie, whose father, James Goudie, was a Presbyterian of the strictest sect (and who was prominent in Indiana politics as a Whig, being several times speaker of the Indiana legislature). His daughter, Elizabeth, although married to a Methodist, proved staunch to her faith and lived and died a Presbyterian. It may be of interest to add, in speaking of a family which has never courted military fame, that while the Clarksons were nearly always engaged in the peaceful lines of schools, letters, commerce and sea-going, the traditions of the name show that it always had good men on guard on every field where their country needed them. Representatives of the family stood with the Saxons for the Saxons in the battle of Hastings, where William the Norman won his title of Conqueror and the rule of England. In the two hundred years of French rulers over England, all of whom sought to fasten the French language on the country as its legitimate speech, the Clarksons were with those of Saxon and English blood who refused to adopt the alien tongue. They were also among the yeomanry that in the thirteenth century stood in the meadow at Runymede and with English wil
l and courage aided in wresting from King John, the meanest of all English sovereigns, the immortal Magna Charta, the first charter of individual liberty in the modern world. In the fourteenth century they were at Bannockburn, and some were among the thirty thousand good Englishmen killed there by the infuriate Scotch, and others were in King Edward's armies that finally defeated Wallace, and indeed they were throughout the war of such varying fortune that finally ended in Robert Bruce being crowned king of Scotland in the Abbey of Scone. During or after this war, some of the Clarksons who, while in Scotland had become enchanted with some of the Scottish lasses, intermarried with the Alexanders and the Mackenzies, the old story of the conquest of love overcoming those of war. Some of them were also in France on the field of Crecey, where Edward the Third, with thirty thousand Englishmen, defeated Phillip the Sixth and eighty thousand Frenchmen. Others of them in the same year fought at Neville's Cross, where the English were led by a queen, the beautiful Phillippa. In the latter years the ancestors of Father Clarkson, always true Englishmen, fond of peace but not afraid of war, bore their part in all the later conquests and warfares of the kingdom, including historic Flodden Field in the sixteenth century. In the religious wars under Mary, some of the family were living in the region of Smithfield, where so many Protestants were burned, and in these and all other religious contests the Clarksons were always Protestants. Particularly in the more cruel and bloody days, and especially when Mary was so cruel to the Protestants of England, and later when Catherine Medici, in France, was slaying the Huguenots, and Elizabeth of England, although Protestant herself, never protesting, did the Clarksons fail to leave a good record on the right side. The family has never had too much of tolerance, and has had its share of bigots, but it never quite believed, even in the earlier days, in killing people to save their souls. I
n the middle of the seventeenth century, in the days of Charles I. and Cromwell, and in the turbulent wrangles between the Puritans, Presbyterians and the other Protestants, and in the mad days of burning books and their authors, Lawrence Clarkson and his book (which was called *Single Eye: All Light, no Darkness,) *were, in September, 1650, condemned by the Long Parliament, the book to be burned by the hangman, which was done, and Clarkson imprisoned for one month and officially notified that he would be burned himself if he reissued his book. True Clarkson and Puritan that he was, he reissued the book as soon as he was out of prison, and then was banished from England for life after having S. S. (Sower of Sedition) burned on both his cheeks. It was only in his later years that Father Clarkson took much interest in pedigree or ancestry. He had been affected in his boyhood by the universal feeling then existing in America, and for many years after the Revolution, to ignore, and if possible to forget all English ancestors a result of the intense hatred of England. He also always had the most respect for any man who had made his own name good or great. But latterly it was natural enough that his exploring mind should reach out finally to learn something of the Clarksons of the long past. This work that he began I was left to take up, and in a visit to England in 1891, I found that the annals of the family were definite and clear as one of the oldest families in England. Indeed, Playford Hall, one of houses of the English Clarksons, in which Thomas Clarkson died, and near which, in a quiet churchyard, his body, surrounded by many of the Clarksons, is buried, is now the oldest fortified house left standing in England. It is in Suffolk, near Ipswich, not far inland from the North Sea. Suffolk and Cambridge and Norfolk and Essex, adjoining Suffolk, have been the homes of the Clarksons for four or five hundred years. The house is still surrounded by a moat, with no access except by a drawbridge. It is a grim house of so
lid stone, peculiarly English, and is still owned by the Clarksons. In 1891 when I was in Liverpool, the place was pointed out to me on the dock where Thomas Clarkson was thrown into the sea by a mob, to prevent him from finishing an anti-slavery speech. He swam out, faced the mob again, and finished his speech. In this sketch is given a picture of Playford Hall, the earliest home of the Clarksons of which the family has even a sketch. Harriet Beecher Stowe, who in 1852, six years after Thomas Clarkson's death, visited Playford Hall to pay her worship at the shrine of the great abolitionist, once told me of the visit, and showed me a copy of his famous seal afterwards adopted as the seal of the abolition cause. It was a cameo made by Wedgewood, the celebrated porcelain manufacturer, and bore the kneeling figure of a negro slave, with arms uplifted, praying for freedom. Mrs. Stowe had gained this memento from the widow of the famous man, and held it in very precious esteem. Frederick Douglass, the greatest of his race, once told me that he had visited Playford Hall and Clarkson's grave three times to pay the respects of his race and his people to the man who first seriously attacked in English words the inhumanity of human slavery. http://books.google.com/books?id=LQ0vAAAAYAAJ&dq=origin%20of%20name%20cla... The general proposition that freedom of expression upon public questions is secured by the First Amendment has long been settled by our decisions. The constitutional safeguard, we have said, "was fashioned to assure unfettered interchange of ideas for the bringing about of political and social changes desired by the people." Roth v. United States, 354 U. S. 476, 484. *"[I]t is a prized American privilege to speak one's mind, although not always with perfect good taste, on all public institutions," Bridges v. California, 314 U. S. 252, 270, and this opportunity is to be afforded for "vigorous advocacy" no less than "abstract discussion." * N. A. A. C.
P. v. Button, 371 U. S. 415, 429.270*270 The First Amendment, said Judge Learned Hand*,"presupposes that right conclusions are more likely to be gathered out of a multitude of tongues, than through any kind of authoritative selection. To many this is, and always will be, folly; but we have staked upon it our all." Researcher for Hire (206-338-5964) *Notice: The information contained in this email and its attachments is CONFIDENTIAL and intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copy of this communication is strictly PROHIBITED and will be considered a tortuous interference in our confidential business relationships. Additionally, unauthorized dissemination of this confidential information subjects you to criminal and civil penalties. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by email, and delete the original message. When emailing me and I am on your mail list, please put my email in the BCC Line, as this protects from much email spam CLARKSON-L (rootsweb.com) Please include your family line with your messages. List contact: Mary Buchholz marybucholz516@gmail"dot"com (CLARKSON,1749 England>Essex Co VA > WV > SD) ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to CLARKSON-request(a)rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message CLARKSON-L (rootsweb.com) Please include your family line with your messages. List contact: Mary Buchholz marybucholz516@gmail"dot"com (CLARKSON,1749 England>Essex Co VA > WV > SD) ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to CLARKSON-request(a)rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message
interesting article.
My thoughts on the subject may represent what will become a more general view, at least as pertaining to surnames.
What we are really doing here, is associating our own name to a PAPER trail, rather than an actual paternal line. I say this because it has been shown that illegitemacy rates are as high as 30% in a family, so the the probability of YOUR surname REALLY being your name is diminished quite a bit.
Then we look at the fact that surnames came into existence in about the 1400's, so that also has an effect.
Then we look at the fact that most names ( CLARKSON) reflect a trade, so that ANYONE in an English or French speaking world, who could read and write, or was Clergy, or a Stone Mason ( Claxon) would take on this name, related or not. So, a surname does NOT imply any relationship at all.
What it does imply, is that perhaps one believes that the magic of sound and vibration in a name, creates some sort of influence on reality. I say this tongue in cheek, but, isn't that wha t we are really saying ?
To get back to my original point, on a new general view of this, is to look at Y DNA... being that the paternal DNA we carry NOW, relates to our family line back to at least 200o years, and much earlier. It is sort of our new " Tartan" for a clan.
In other words, what we are really doing in paper genealogy, is following a LEGAL paper trail "proving" our fathers line, which of course, it does not.
It is strange that this paper trail is legal in court for proving these things, but a DNA test proves who a childs father REALLY is.
Very strange.
Just my thoughts on things.
Rich Clarkson
----- Original Message -----
From: "l e" <lark.eagle(a)gmail.com>
To: CLARKSON(a)rootsweb.com
Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2011 5:22:10 AM
Subject: [CLARKSON] The Clarkson line runs back to the British and Saxon times of Alfred the Great and Edward the Confessor, the noblest and wisest of the Saxon kings; and also into Normandy, long before the daysof William.
History of political parties, national reminiscences, and the Tippecanoe
...
By Dorus Morton Fox
Nearly all men, and perhaps all men of personal power, have their idols
among public leaders. Greatness in man is witness of God. Father Clarkson's
pre-eminent heroes, who lived always deep in his heart, were first, Henry
Ward Beecher the great premier friend that his own life touched so early in
comradeship and sympathy; Henry Clay, who perhaps was loved and admired by
him above all other men; Daniel Webster, with less of love but possibly
greater admiration; and later, and beginning with Harrison's first candidacy
for the presidency in 1836, William Henry Harrison, the nearer neighbor, and
long time personal friend, for whose friendshtp he finally paid the costly
price of opposing the ambitions and alienating the affections of both Clay
and Webster. In after years his idols were Abraham Lincoln and General
Grant, with both of whom he enjoyed intimate acquaintance, and both of whom
when in the presidency availed themselves of his services for important
public and secret services. Another leader he greatly loved was Bishop
Simpson, the greatest of all the .Methodists, and long and closely his
personal friend. Blaine he admired always, and in frequent visits that he
had with him in the home of one of his own lamily in Des Moines learned to
hold him in much affection a\so. But in all questions between Grant and
Blaine, he always stood with the former. The later Harrison, in whose star
he always believed, and whose election as president he had long predicted,
was one of his accepted heroes, too. This was a hereditary friendship in
large part. As Egyptian harps when found after three thousand years of
burial and silence sound when their strings are touched, so did the heart of
tin: Clarkson of 1835 respond when touched again bythesound of the
Harrison name
fifty-three years afterwards. Out of his and other veterans' love for the
grandsire, and predisposition to the grandson, grew the Tippecanoe clubs of
Iowa. The Scotch and English in his blood was proved by his quick rally to
the name of Harrison, and by his doing so from public and historic motives
rather than personal liking. It is an interesting fact, in proof that time
is not so long, nor the world so very wide after all, that on English soil
two hundred years before, theClarksons and the Harrisons had been in
alliance, both families fighting under King Charles and Oliver Cromwell (the
latter an ancestor of the American I larrisons ) on Marston Moor and at
Naseby. In the later day, two hundred years after, it was simply old allies
touching elbows again—and Father Clarkson was of the sturdy and loyal stuff
to respond to such a sentiment. He had alwavs trained his family to revere
the name of Harrison, and even before the later Harrison had been nominated
in 1888, he frequently rated him as being a much abler but less lovable man
than the first Harrison. A letter from him lies before me as I write,
written in the summer of 1888, which shows how clearly and closely he
analyzed men. It was in reply to a letter of mine, written while I was
visiting Indianapolis, as a member of the Republican National committee,
called there by the new nominee of the party, for conference and in response
to an observation of mine, that I had found the new leader with a
personality not nearly so winning as that of Blaine's and that "measured by
the heart, it was a long way from Indianapolis to Augusta." His answer was:
"It may be that the temperament of the later Harrison is such that he is not
responsive to friendship, or moved by gratitude, and such that the men whose
devotion and sacrifice gained him his nomination, and shall gain him his
election, may be left to starve for want of bread. But it is also true that
he will prove as able a president as the Republic has had, and that no stain
will ever be left on the Nation or his party from any action of his." The
evolution of temperament and temperature in the Harrison administration
never surprised him in the least. His predictions were all fulfilled. No
abler man in sheer personal power ever was president, and no president ever
so lightly regarded the friendships and obligations of politics.
This devotion in supporting a name and in loyally responding to tradition
signally proved Father Clarkson's own nature. He supported a Harrison in
1836, and again in 1840, because he believed in the man; he supported a
Harrison in 1888 because he believed in the blood. He never changed his
friendship once it was given; he always sought to make it certain never to
give it where it would have to incur the peril of a change. To him the code
of honor among men of honor is never to lose a friend. His idols, and
particularly the two men for whom he voted in National conventions Harrison
and Lincoln — were all bitterly assailed at critical times in their careers.
His faith never wavered, and his clear vision always saw the falsity of the
charges that finally died harmless at the feet of the men against w hom they
were aimed. This was the Puritan salt in his blood, and the finer English
salt that saved him from the cowardice of ever abandoning a friend under
fire. No slander of any private friend or public leader, however angry or
pitiless, ever found in him an atom of craven or shrinking blood to respond
to it. Not even the storm that played so fiercely about Beecher's proud name,
and which largely carried conviction at last to the multitude, ever
made himdoubt for a moment the honor of the friend of his youth. It
was this staunch
and invincible loyalty and unchangeability that guided and illumined his
life. It was ingrained in the man; it was the man; and it was a nature that
had come down to him in honest pedigree, running back in clear lines to the
earliest days of England.
*It is commonly said, and often with much of truth, that all families of
actual English ancestry run back in blood if not in name to the days of
William the Conqueror and of .Matilda, the first queen of England. The Clarkson
line runs back by its own name and in the collateral lines to an even
earlier day, or to the British and Saxon times of Alfred the Great and
Edward the Confessor, the noblest and wisest of the Saxon kings; and also
into Normandy, long before the daysof William. The onenotable thingin the
wholecareer of the name has been a love of writing and letters. Its very name
originated itself or was evolved out of Saxon terms, by the fact of its
earliest known men of the name being clever and deft in reading and writing.
In the early day a secretary or clerk was called a clark, and a dark's
son easily
became Clarkson, which was undoubtedly the origin of the name. It is one of
the proudest traditions in the legends of the family, that even in the
earliest days, when the only language was a dialect made up of provincial
terms and arbitrary signs, and when the Anglo-Saxon ( or old English, as
many may prefer to call it), was mingling with the old French into the more
definite and stately form that flowered in Chaucer's splendid vocabulary,
and in Walter Map's rich and beautiful stories of the Quest of the Holy
Grail, and the Knights of the Round Table, two or three hundred years later,
and when kings and queens even, often could not write and signed their
name with
the stamps of signet rings, that even then the representatives of the family
had skill in speech and in expressing it in the forms of writing then in
vogue. All through the centuries since this has been a characteristic of the
people of this name, as the legends of the family attest, the skill in
language and in writing quickly developing into a faculty for teaching, and
sometimes for preaching. In the eighteenth century some of the family held
chief places in schools and colleges, including Cambridge University. In the
Wiesbach and Cambridge and Essex and Suffolk region, in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries several noted men of this blood were produced,
including among men of letters the famous abolitionist Thomas Clarkson, and
quite a number of noted men of the name among shipping and seafaring people.
About 1750 the family divided, the line out of which Father Clarkson came
migrating to the region of Cornwall, drawn there by an interest in the tin
mines.** Some of the Clarksons of collateral lines had come to America in
1700 or earlier, with the later Puritans, and one of this branch was Captain
James Clarkson, who marched with Arnold from Maine through the woods into
Canada in the Revolutionary War*. The first Clarkson of Father Clarkson's
own line to come to America was his grandfather, who came first as a
lieutenant-colonel in the English army, in 1775, who was wounded seriously
in the battle of Bunker Hill; was then sent back to England, where he at
once resigned and came immediately to America in 1777, to adopt it as a
home. He had married, on leaving England, a daughter of the Perkinhons (now
often called in England Pulkinghorn), the English family of celebrated
wealth and still largely the owners of the Cornwall mines. She was a lady of
great beauty and much spirit, who married the army officer against the will
of her parents, leaving the ancestral home at night, and being married the
next morning on shipboard, as the vessel was leaving the harbor at Yarmouth.
She never was forgiven by them; her letters to them were never answered, and
this silence between the families has now remained unbroken nearly one
hundred and twenty years. The young people who had thus angered and
alienated their English fortunes by coming to America landed at or near
Newbury port, lived a while at Salem and Hampton and Rye Heach, but soon
removed to Stratham, now a suburb of Exeter, New Hampshire, where a son (the
father of Father Clarkson ) was born, and who was named Richard
Perkinhon Clarkson,
for the two grandfathers, a name which has always been preserved in the
family, and is duplicated in that of the present owner and editor of the *Iou*a
State Register. *Here Colonel Clarkson and Eleanor Perkinhon lived and died,
and their bodies are buried in the cemetery at Stratford. When the young
Richard Clarkson, the first native American Clarkson, born in 1779, had
grown up to manhood, he married Mary Simpson, whose father had descended
from the early Puritans, had been an officer in the Continental army, and
had fought at Bunker Hill, and moved to Maine, then a part of Massachusetts,
not becoming a State until 1820. Here Father Clarkson was born at Dixmont.
near Bangor, in 1811. The family left its fighting mark as a tradition in
that region; and in 1892, when Cleveland was elected over Harrison, the
Democrats of Bangor drew their cannon to the top of Clarkson Hill to fire
it, thereby adding to the emphasis of their joy because of the historic
connection between the Harrison and Clarkson families.
The Clarksons were of Puritan faith, Mary Simpson represented a Baptist
departure from Puritan faith, and on these two faiths mingled the family
altar was established and kept until Father Clarkson, fifteen years old, in
Indiana embraced Methodism. At twenty-one he married Elizabeth Goudie, whose
father, James Goudie, was a Presbyterian of the strictest sect (and who was
prominent in Indiana politics as a Whig, being several times speaker of the
Indiana legislature). His daughter, Elizabeth, although married to a
Methodist, proved staunch to her faith and lived and died a Presbyterian.
It may be of interest to add, in speaking of a family which has never
courted military fame, that while the Clarksons were nearly always engaged
in the peaceful lines of schools, letters, commerce and sea-going, the
traditions of the name show that it always had good men on guard on every
field where their country needed them. Representatives of the family stood
with the Saxons for the Saxons in the battle of Hastings, where William the
Norman won his title of Conqueror and the rule of England. In the two
hundred years of French rulers over England, all of whom sought to fasten
the French language on the country as its legitimate speech, the Clarksons
were with those of Saxon and English blood who refused to adopt the alien
tongue. They were also among the yeomanry that in the thirteenth century
stood in the meadow at Runymede and with English will and courage aided in
wresting from King John, the meanest of all English sovereigns, the immortal
Magna Charta, the first charter of individual liberty in the modern world.
In the fourteenth century they were at Bannockburn, and some were among the
thirty thousand good Englishmen killed there by the infuriate Scotch, and
others were in King Edward's armies that finally defeated Wallace, and
indeed they were throughout the war of such varying fortune that finally
ended in Robert Bruce being crowned king of Scotland in the Abbey of Scone.
During or after this war, some of the Clarksons who, while in Scotland had
become enchanted with some of the Scottish lasses, intermarried with the
Alexanders and the Mackenzies, the old story of the conquest of love
overcoming those of war. Some of them were also in France on the field of
Crecey, where Edward the Third, with thirty thousand Englishmen, defeated
Phillip the Sixth and eighty thousand Frenchmen. Others of them in the same
year fought at Neville's Cross, where the English were led by a queen, the
beautiful Phillippa. In the latter years the ancestors of Father
Clarkson, always
true Englishmen, fond of peace but not afraid of war, bore their part in all
the later conquests and warfares of the kingdom, including historic Flodden
Field in the sixteenth century. In the religious wars under Mary, some of
the family were living in the region of Smithfield, where so many
Protestants
were burned, and in these and all other religious contests the Clarksons
were always Protestants. Particularly in the more cruel and bloody days, and
especially when Mary was so cruel to the Protestants of England, and later
when Catherine Medici, in France, was slaying the Huguenots, and Elizabeth
of England, although Protestant herself, never protesting, did the Clarksons
fail to leave a good record on the right side. The family has never had too
much of tolerance, and has had its share of bigots, but it never quite
believed, even in the earlier days, in killing people to save their souls.
In the middle of the seventeenth century, in the days of Charles I. and
Cromwell, and in the turbulent wrangles between the Puritans, Presbyterians
and the other Protestants, and in the mad days of burning books and their
authors, Lawrence Clarkson and his book (which was called *Single Eye: All
Light, no Darkness,) *were, in September, 1650, condemned by the Long
Parliament, the book to be burned by the hangman, which was done, and Clarkson
imprisoned for one month and officially notified that he would be burned
himself if he reissued his book. True Clarkson and Puritan that he was, he
reissued the book as soon as he was out of prison, and then was banished
from England for life after having S. S. (Sower of Sedition) burned on both
his cheeks.
It was only in his later years that Father Clarkson took much interest in
pedigree or ancestry. He had been affected in his boyhood by the universal
feeling then existing in America, and for many years after the Revolution,
to ignore, and if possible to forget all English ancestors a result of the
intense hatred of England. He also always had the most respect for any man
who had made his own name good or great. But latterly it was natural enough
that his exploring mind should reach out finally to learn something of the
Clarksons of the long past. This work that he began I was left to take up,
and in a visit to England in 1891, I found that the annals of the family
were definite and clear as one of the oldest families in England. Indeed,
Playford Hall, one of houses of the English Clarksons, in which Thomas Clarkson
died, and near which, in a quiet churchyard, his body, surrounded by many of
the Clarksons, is buried, is now the oldest fortified house left standing in
England. It is in Suffolk, near Ipswich, not far inland from the North Sea.
Suffolk and Cambridge and Norfolk and Essex, adjoining Suffolk, have been
the homes of the Clarksons for four or five hundred years. The house is
still surrounded by a moat, with no access except by a drawbridge. It is a
grim house of solid stone, peculiarly English, and is still owned by the
Clarksons. In 1891 when I was in Liverpool, the place was pointed out to me
on the dock where Thomas Clarkson was thrown into the sea by a mob, to
prevent him from finishing an anti-slavery speech. He swam out, faced the
mob again, and finished his speech. In this sketch is given a picture of
Playford Hall, the earliest home of the Clarksons of which the family has
even a sketch. Harriet Beecher Stowe, who in 1852, six years after Thomas
Clarkson's death, visited Playford Hall to pay her worship at the shrine of
the great abolitionist, once told me of the visit, and showed me a copy of
his famous seal afterwards adopted as the seal of the abolition cause. It
was a cameo made by Wedgewood, the celebrated porcelain manufacturer, and
bore the kneeling figure of a negro slave, with arms uplifted, praying for
freedom. Mrs. Stowe had gained this memento from the widow of the famous
man, and held it in very precious esteem. Frederick Douglass, the greatest
of his race, once told me that he had visited Playford Hall and Clarkson's
grave three times to pay the respects of his race and his people to the man
who first seriously attacked in English words the inhumanity of human
slavery.
http://books.google.com/books?id=LQ0vAAAAYAAJ&dq=origin%20of%20name%20cla...
The general proposition that freedom of expression upon public questions is
secured by the First Amendment has long been settled by our decisions.
The constitutional safeguard, we have said, "was fashioned to assure
unfettered interchange of ideas for the bringing about of political and
social changes desired by the people."
Roth v. United States, 354 U. S. 476, 484.
*"[I]t is a prized American privilege to speak one's mind, although not
always with perfect good taste, on all public institutions," Bridges v.
California, 314 U. S. 252, 270, and this opportunity is to be afforded for
"vigorous advocacy" no less than "abstract discussion."
*
N. A. A. C. P. v. Button, 371 U. S. 415, 429.270*270 The First Amendment,
said Judge Learned Hand*,"presupposes that right conclusions are more likely
to be gathered out of a multitude of tongues, than through any kind of
authoritative selection. To many this is, and always will be, folly;
but we have staked upon it our all."
Researcher for Hire (206-338-5964)
*Notice: The information contained in this email and its attachments is
CONFIDENTIAL and intended only for the use of the individual or entity named
above. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are
hereby notified that any dissemination,
distribution, or copy of this communication is strictly PROHIBITED and will
be considered a tortuous interference in our confidential business
relationships. Additionally, unauthorized dissemination of this confidential
information subjects you to criminal and civil penalties. If you have
received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by email,
and delete the original message.
When emailing me and I am on your mail list, please put my email in the
BCC Line, as this protects from much email spam
CLARKSON-L (rootsweb.com)
Please include your family line with your messages.
List contact: Mary Buchholz
marybucholz516@gmail"dot"com (CLARKSON,1749 England>Essex Co VA > WV > SD)
-------------------------------
To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to CLARKSON-request(a)rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message
History of political parties, national reminiscences, and the Tippecanoe
...
By Dorus Morton Fox
Nearly all men, and perhaps all men of personal power, have their idols
among public leaders. Greatness in man is witness of God. Father Clarkson's
pre-eminent heroes, who lived always deep in his heart, were first, Henry
Ward Beecher the great premier friend that his own life touched so early in
comradeship and sympathy; Henry Clay, who perhaps was loved and admired by
him above all other men; Daniel Webster, with less of love but possibly
greater admiration; and later, and beginning with Harrison's first candidacy
for the presidency in 1836, William Henry Harrison, the nearer neighbor, and
long time personal friend, for whose friendshtp he finally paid the costly
price of opposing the ambitions and alienating the affections of both Clay
and Webster. In after years his idols were Abraham Lincoln and General
Grant, with both of whom he enjoyed intimate acquaintance, and both of whom
when in the presidency availed themselves of his services for important
public and secret services. Another leader he greatly loved was Bishop
Simpson, the greatest of all the .Methodists, and long and closely his
personal friend. Blaine he admired always, and in frequent visits that he
had with him in the home of one of his own lamily in Des Moines learned to
hold him in much affection a\so. But in all questions between Grant and
Blaine, he always stood with the former. The later Harrison, in whose star
he always believed, and whose election as president he had long predicted,
was one of his accepted heroes, too. This was a hereditary friendship in
large part. As Egyptian harps when found after three thousand years of
burial and silence sound when their strings are touched, so did the heart of
tin: Clarkson of 1835 respond when touched again bythesound of the
Harrison name
fifty-three years afterwards. Out of his and other veterans' love for the
grandsire, and predisposition to the grandson, grew the Tippecanoe clubs of
Iowa. The Scotch and English in his blood was proved by his quick rally to
the name of Harrison, and by his doing so from public and historic motives
rather than personal liking. It is an interesting fact, in proof that time
is not so long, nor the world so very wide after all, that on English soil
two hundred years before, theClarksons and the Harrisons had been in
alliance, both families fighting under King Charles and Oliver Cromwell (the
latter an ancestor of the American I larrisons ) on Marston Moor and at
Naseby. In the later day, two hundred years after, it was simply old allies
touching elbows again—and Father Clarkson was of the sturdy and loyal stuff
to respond to such a sentiment. He had alwavs trained his family to revere
the name of Harrison, and even before the later Harrison had been nominated
in 1888, he frequently rated him as being a much abler but less lovable man
than the first Harrison. A letter from him lies before me as I write,
written in the summer of 1888, which shows how clearly and closely he
analyzed men. It was in reply to a letter of mine, written while I was
visiting Indianapolis, as a member of the Republican National committee,
called there by the new nominee of the party, for conference and in response
to an observation of mine, that I had found the new leader with a
personality not nearly so winning as that of Blaine's and that "measured by
the heart, it was a long way from Indianapolis to Augusta." His answer was:
"It may be that the temperament of the later Harrison is such that he is not
responsive to friendship, or moved by gratitude, and such that the men whose
devotion and sacrifice gained him his nomination, and shall gain him his
election, may be left to starve for want of bread. But it is also true that
he will prove as able a president as the Republic has had, and that no stain
will ever be left on the Nation or his party from any action of his." The
evolution of temperament and temperature in the Harrison administration
never surprised him in the least. His predictions were all fulfilled. No
abler man in sheer personal power ever was president, and no president ever
so lightly regarded the friendships and obligations of politics.
This devotion in supporting a name and in loyally responding to tradition
signally proved Father Clarkson's own nature. He supported a Harrison in
1836, and again in 1840, because he believed in the man; he supported a
Harrison in 1888 because he believed in the blood. He never changed his
friendship once it was given; he always sought to make it certain never to
give it where it would have to incur the peril of a change. To him the code
of honor among men of honor is never to lose a friend. His idols, and
particularly the two men for whom he voted in National conventions Harrison
and Lincoln — were all bitterly assailed at critical times in their careers.
His faith never wavered, and his clear vision always saw the falsity of the
charges that finally died harmless at the feet of the men against w hom they
were aimed. This was the Puritan salt in his blood, and the finer English
salt that saved him from the cowardice of ever abandoning a friend under
fire. No slander of any private friend or public leader, however angry or
pitiless, ever found in him an atom of craven or shrinking blood to respond
to it. Not even the storm that played so fiercely about Beecher's proud name,
and which largely carried conviction at last to the multitude, ever
made himdoubt for a moment the honor of the friend of his youth. It
was this staunch
and invincible loyalty and unchangeability that guided and illumined his
life. It was ingrained in the man; it was the man; and it was a nature that
had come down to him in honest pedigree, running back in clear lines to the
earliest days of England.
*It is commonly said, and often with much of truth, that all families of
actual English ancestry run back in blood if not in name to the days of
William the Conqueror and of .Matilda, the first queen of England. The Clarkson
line runs back by its own name and in the collateral lines to an even
earlier day, or to the British and Saxon times of Alfred the Great and
Edward the Confessor, the noblest and wisest of the Saxon kings; and also
into Normandy, long before the daysof William. The onenotable thingin the
wholecareer of the name has been a love of writing and letters. Its very name
originated itself or was evolved out of Saxon terms, by the fact of its
earliest known men of the name being clever and deft in reading and writing.
In the early day a secretary or clerk was called a clark, and a dark's
son easily
became Clarkson, which was undoubtedly the origin of the name. It is one of
the proudest traditions in the legends of the family, that even in the
earliest days, when the only language was a dialect made up of provincial
terms and arbitrary signs, and when the Anglo-Saxon ( or old English, as
many may prefer to call it), was mingling with the old French into the more
definite and stately form that flowered in Chaucer's splendid vocabulary,
and in Walter Map's rich and beautiful stories of the Quest of the Holy
Grail, and the Knights of the Round Table, two or three hundred years later,
and when kings and queens even, often could not write and signed their
name with
the stamps of signet rings, that even then the representatives of the family
had skill in speech and in expressing it in the forms of writing then in
vogue. All through the centuries since this has been a characteristic of the
people of this name, as the legends of the family attest, the skill in
language and in writing quickly developing into a faculty for teaching, and
sometimes for preaching. In the eighteenth century some of the family held
chief places in schools and colleges, including Cambridge University. In the
Wiesbach and Cambridge and Essex and Suffolk region, in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries several noted men of this blood were produced,
including among men of letters the famous abolitionist Thomas Clarkson, and
quite a number of noted men of the name among shipping and seafaring people.
About 1750 the family divided, the line out of which Father Clarkson came
migrating to the region of Cornwall, drawn there by an interest in the tin
mines.** Some of the Clarksons of collateral lines had come to America in
1700 or earlier, with the later Puritans, and one of this branch was Captain
James Clarkson, who marched with Arnold from Maine through the woods into
Canada in the Revolutionary War*. The first Clarkson of Father Clarkson's
own line to come to America was his grandfather, who came first as a
lieutenant-colonel in the English army, in 1775, who was wounded seriously
in the battle of Bunker Hill; was then sent back to England, where he at
once resigned and came immediately to America in 1777, to adopt it as a
home. He had married, on leaving England, a daughter of the Perkinhons (now
often called in England Pulkinghorn), the English family of celebrated
wealth and still largely the owners of the Cornwall mines. She was a lady of
great beauty and much spirit, who married the army officer against the will
of her parents, leaving the ancestral home at night, and being married the
next morning on shipboard, as the vessel was leaving the harbor at Yarmouth.
She never was forgiven by them; her letters to them were never answered, and
this silence between the families has now remained unbroken nearly one
hundred and twenty years. The young people who had thus angered and
alienated their English fortunes by coming to America landed at or near
Newbury port, lived a while at Salem and Hampton and Rye Heach, but soon
removed to Stratham, now a suburb of Exeter, New Hampshire, where a son (the
father of Father Clarkson ) was born, and who was named Richard
Perkinhon Clarkson,
for the two grandfathers, a name which has always been preserved in the
family, and is duplicated in that of the present owner and editor of the *Iou*a
State Register. *Here Colonel Clarkson and Eleanor Perkinhon lived and died,
and their bodies are buried in the cemetery at Stratford. When the young
Richard Clarkson, the first native American Clarkson, born in 1779, had
grown up to manhood, he married Mary Simpson, whose father had descended
from the early Puritans, had been an officer in the Continental army, and
had fought at Bunker Hill, and moved to Maine, then a part of Massachusetts,
not becoming a State until 1820. Here Father Clarkson was born at Dixmont.
near Bangor, in 1811. The family left its fighting mark as a tradition in
that region; and in 1892, when Cleveland was elected over Harrison, the
Democrats of Bangor drew their cannon to the top of Clarkson Hill to fire
it, thereby adding to the emphasis of their joy because of the historic
connection between the Harrison and Clarkson families.
The Clarksons were of Puritan faith, Mary Simpson represented a Baptist
departure from Puritan faith, and on these two faiths mingled the family
altar was established and kept until Father Clarkson, fifteen years old, in
Indiana embraced Methodism. At twenty-one he married Elizabeth Goudie, whose
father, James Goudie, was a Presbyterian of the strictest sect (and who was
prominent in Indiana politics as a Whig, being several times speaker of the
Indiana legislature). His daughter, Elizabeth, although married to a
Methodist, proved staunch to her faith and lived and died a Presbyterian.
It may be of interest to add, in speaking of a family which has never
courted military fame, that while the Clarksons were nearly always engaged
in the peaceful lines of schools, letters, commerce and sea-going, the
traditions of the name show that it always had good men on guard on every
field where their country needed them. Representatives of the family stood
with the Saxons for the Saxons in the battle of Hastings, where William the
Norman won his title of Conqueror and the rule of England. In the two
hundred years of French rulers over England, all of whom sought to fasten
the French language on the country as its legitimate speech, the Clarksons
were with those of Saxon and English blood who refused to adopt the alien
tongue. They were also among the yeomanry that in the thirteenth century
stood in the meadow at Runymede and with English will and courage aided in
wresting from King John, the meanest of all English sovereigns, the immortal
Magna Charta, the first charter of individual liberty in the modern world.
In the fourteenth century they were at Bannockburn, and some were among the
thirty thousand good Englishmen killed there by the infuriate Scotch, and
others were in King Edward's armies that finally defeated Wallace, and
indeed they were throughout the war of such varying fortune that finally
ended in Robert Bruce being crowned king of Scotland in the Abbey of Scone.
During or after this war, some of the Clarksons who, while in Scotland had
become enchanted with some of the Scottish lasses, intermarried with the
Alexanders and the Mackenzies, the old story of the conquest of love
overcoming those of war. Some of them were also in France on the field of
Crecey, where Edward the Third, with thirty thousand Englishmen, defeated
Phillip the Sixth and eighty thousand Frenchmen. Others of them in the same
year fought at Neville's Cross, where the English were led by a queen, the
beautiful Phillippa. In the latter years the ancestors of Father
Clarkson, always
true Englishmen, fond of peace but not afraid of war, bore their part in all
the later conquests and warfares of the kingdom, including historic Flodden
Field in the sixteenth century. In the religious wars under Mary, some of
the family were living in the region of Smithfield, where so many
Protestants
were burned, and in these and all other religious contests the Clarksons
were always Protestants. Particularly in the more cruel and bloody days, and
especially when Mary was so cruel to the Protestants of England, and later
when Catherine Medici, in France, was slaying the Huguenots, and Elizabeth
of England, although Protestant herself, never protesting, did the Clarksons
fail to leave a good record on the right side. The family has never had too
much of tolerance, and has had its share of bigots, but it never quite
believed, even in the earlier days, in killing people to save their souls.
In the middle of the seventeenth century, in the days of Charles I. and
Cromwell, and in the turbulent wrangles between the Puritans, Presbyterians
and the other Protestants, and in the mad days of burning books and their
authors, Lawrence Clarkson and his book (which was called *Single Eye: All
Light, no Darkness,) *were, in September, 1650, condemned by the Long
Parliament, the book to be burned by the hangman, which was done, and Clarkson
imprisoned for one month and officially notified that he would be burned
himself if he reissued his book. True Clarkson and Puritan that he was, he
reissued the book as soon as he was out of prison, and then was banished
from England for life after having S. S. (Sower of Sedition) burned on both
his cheeks.
It was only in his later years that Father Clarkson took much interest in
pedigree or ancestry. He had been affected in his boyhood by the universal
feeling then existing in America, and for many years after the Revolution,
to ignore, and if possible to forget all English ancestors a result of the
intense hatred of England. He also always had the most respect for any man
who had made his own name good or great. But latterly it was natural enough
that his exploring mind should reach out finally to learn something of the
Clarksons of the long past. This work that he began I was left to take up,
and in a visit to England in 1891, I found that the annals of the family
were definite and clear as one of the oldest families in England. Indeed,
Playford Hall, one of houses of the English Clarksons, in which Thomas Clarkson
died, and near which, in a quiet churchyard, his body, surrounded by many of
the Clarksons, is buried, is now the oldest fortified house left standing in
England. It is in Suffolk, near Ipswich, not far inland from the North Sea.
Suffolk and Cambridge and Norfolk and Essex, adjoining Suffolk, have been
the homes of the Clarksons for four or five hundred years. The house is
still surrounded by a moat, with no access except by a drawbridge. It is a
grim house of solid stone, peculiarly English, and is still owned by the
Clarksons. In 1891 when I was in Liverpool, the place was pointed out to me
on the dock where Thomas Clarkson was thrown into the sea by a mob, to
prevent him from finishing an anti-slavery speech. He swam out, faced the
mob again, and finished his speech. In this sketch is given a picture of
Playford Hall, the earliest home of the Clarksons of which the family has
even a sketch. Harriet Beecher Stowe, who in 1852, six years after Thomas
Clarkson's death, visited Playford Hall to pay her worship at the shrine of
the great abolitionist, once told me of the visit, and showed me a copy of
his famous seal afterwards adopted as the seal of the abolition cause. It
was a cameo made by Wedgewood, the celebrated porcelain manufacturer, and
bore the kneeling figure of a negro slave, with arms uplifted, praying for
freedom. Mrs. Stowe had gained this memento from the widow of the famous
man, and held it in very precious esteem. Frederick Douglass, the greatest
of his race, once told me that he had visited Playford Hall and Clarkson's
grave three times to pay the respects of his race and his people to the man
who first seriously attacked in English words the inhumanity of human
slavery.
http://books.google.com/books?id=LQ0vAAAAYAAJ&dq=origin%20of%20name%20cla...
The general proposition that freedom of expression upon public questions is
secured by the First Amendment has long been settled by our decisions.
The constitutional safeguard, we have said, "was fashioned to assure
unfettered interchange of ideas for the bringing about of political and
social changes desired by the people."
Roth v. United States, 354 U. S. 476, 484.
*"[I]t is a prized American privilege to speak one's mind, although not
always with perfect good taste, on all public institutions," Bridges v.
California, 314 U. S. 252, 270, and this opportunity is to be afforded for
"vigorous advocacy" no less than "abstract discussion."
*
N. A. A. C. P. v. Button, 371 U. S. 415, 429.270*270 The First Amendment,
said Judge Learned Hand*,"presupposes that right conclusions are more likely
to be gathered out of a multitude of tongues, than through any kind of
authoritative selection. To many this is, and always will be, folly;
but we have staked upon it our all."
Researcher for Hire (206-338-5964)
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This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list.
Author: marjoriesmall1
Surnames: clarkson
Classification: queries
Message Board URL:
http://boards.rootsweb.com/surnames.clarkson/91.1.2.3/mb.ashx
Message Board Post:
hi my gandad was joesph clarkson my nan was susan sampson iam lookig for kennth clarkson son of fred clarkson and kathleen fuller marjorie
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Author: BaseleyG
Surnames: Baseley, Scavey, Clarkson, Bird, Walsh
Classification: queries
Message Board URL:
http://boards.rootsweb.com/surnames.clarkson/714/mb.ashx
Message Board Post:
Hi! I'm researching the Clarksons. They originated in Glasgow Scotland and ended up in Liverpool England. I am especially interested in David Clarkson born around 1870. His mother was Janet. He married Mary Ellen Scavey of Liverpool and had two children, Bridget and Janet. Janet is sometimes displayed Scavey in birth records.
Any help would be really appreciated.
Gary BAseley
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