Frank Wigglesworth Clarke - Early Life & Education

Early Life & Education

Professor Clarke’s parents, Samuel and Abby (Fisher) Clarke, were residents of Boston, Massachusetts. Samuel Clarke was a hardware merchant and dealer in iron-working machinery. Abby Clarke died when Frank Clarke was an infant of ten days. Among Clarke’s New England ties were a grandfather serving as a Unitarian minister at Princeton, New Jersey and Uxbridge, Massachusetts; another serving as a colonel under General George Washington in the Continental Army, and a third who wrote Day of Doom, am 18th century Puritan poem. Frank Clarke was raised by his Unitarian grandfather at Uxbridge until 1851. His father then remarried, and the new family constituted itself at Woburn, Massachusetts until 1858. The Clarkes lived at Worcester, Massachusetts from 1859–1866, when they returned to Boston. After Frank left for collegiate studies, Samuel Clarke moved to Watertown where he resided until his death in 1907. Professor Clarke’s primary education occurred in Woburn and Uxbridge, Massachusetts; his secondary schooling was gained at a boarding school in Stoughton and several schools in Boston. He attended Boston Latin School and the English High School before matriculating to Harvard College’s Lawrence Scientific School in March 1865. His Harvard mentor was Wolcott Gibbs. Clarke took his bachelors of science from Harvard in 1867 and took a position as a chemistry lecturer, Boston Dental College. He then served as a Chemistry instructor under hydrocarbon scientist and fellow Lawrence School graduate, Professor James Mason Crafts at the young Cornell University. Often stereotyped as a “chemist,” the record shows Professor Clarke to also have been an geologist. His short sojourn in Ithaca, New York prompted extensive surveys of local geologic forms, resumed when he taught at the University of Cincinnati. Clarke returned to Boston after the AY 1868-1869, and resumed lectures at the Boston Dental College and pursued literary and journalistic endeavors, including reporting for the Boston Advertiser, through 1873.