Santa Barbara County Biographies

I. M. CLARK

Submitted by Peggy Hooper

This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm


I. M. CLARK, one of the intelligent ranchers of Lompoc, who farms with his head 
as well as his hands, was born in Monroe County, Michigan, in 1845. His father 
was a mechanic in early life, but devoted his later life to farming. He moved his family 
of eight children to California in 1856, and settled in Alameda County, where he died in 
1876, at the age of seventy-one years. His widow is still living, hale and hearty, at the 
age of eighty-four years. The subject of this sketch passed his early life at home, and 
in March, 1865, enlisted at San Jose, having passed several years in the Home Guards, in 
Company E, First Cavalry, under Captain McElroy, and they were then sent to Arizona. 
Mr. Clark was mainly on escort duty with the paymaster, and during the year rode 3,000 
miles. He was discharged at Drum Barracks, Los Angeles, in 1866. He then passed two 
years in roaming and riding over the country, and in 1868 settled in Pajaro Valley, near 
Watsonville, with his brother. They also had a stock-ranch in San Benito County, 
consisting of 900 acres, where they raised horses and hogs, and continued the partner- 
ship until 1878. Mr. Clark then became agent for Major J. L. Rathburn and the 
Athertons, who owned large ranches. He superintended the farming and attended to 
the sale of lands until 1885, when he came to Lompoc. He bought eighty acres of land, 
to which he has since added ten acres more, making his present attractive ranch. He 
makes beans his main crop, planting about forty acres; and during the wet season, when 
the potato crop is likely to be light on the wet lands, he pays careful attention to that 
crop. In 1889, from seven acres of land, he cleared $1,700, obtaining a yield of 275 
bushels to the acre. Mr. Clark is a careful, systematic farmer, and now enjoys what in 
boyhood was his chief ambition, to have a nice farm, with every desirable tool, and 
sufficient horses to conduct his ranch. 

On March 8, 1882, Mr. Clark received a certificate from Governor Perkins of California, 
in accordance with a passage of the Legislature, testifying the people's gratitude to 
the soldiers of the civil war. Though an ardent Republican, he aspires to no political 
distinction, but devotes himself to his family and the proper maintenance of his ranch. He 
is a member of Robert Anderson Post, G. A. R. 

Mr. Clark has been twice married; first in Watsonville, in 1866, but his first wife survived 
but a short time. He was married the second time at San Jose, in 1869, to Miss Juliet 
Duncan, a native of Missouri, who came to California in infancy. No children have 
been born of this union. 

History of Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Ventura Counties, California  - by 
C.M. Gidney, Benjamin Brooks, Edwin M. Sheridan, Vol I, II.  -Lewis Publ. Co., 
Chicago, 1917.