Sutter-Yuba County Biographies

ALBERT J. CLARKE

Transcribed by: Kathy Sedler

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

 
            The Clarke home place lies three miles west of Yuba City and 
consists of eighteen and a half acres, highly developed to an orchard of cling 
peaches.  Al Clarke, as he is familiarly known by all of his friends, was born 
at Brockville, Ontario, Canada, April 2, 1865.  He is a son of Sylvester J. and 
Jane (Bowen) Clarke, natives respectively of Vermont and the North of Ireland.  
The father was a printer, and was employed on a paper in Syracuse, N. Y., when 
he enlisted in a New York cavalry regiment for service in the Civil War.  At the 
siege of Richmond, just before the close of the war, he was hit by a shell and 
killed.  The mother, Jane (Bowen) Clarke, was reared in England and came to 
Canada with relatives.  In 1868 she brought her little son Albert to California, 
coming via Panama direct to Marysville, where she had two brothers and a sister 
living, and where she resided for many years.  She then moved to San Rafael, 
where she died in 1912, at the age of eighty-two years.
            Al Clarke attended public school in Marysville until about fifteen 
years old, when he was forced to go to work.  He became an apprentice to learn 
the plumber�s trade with White, Colley & Cutts, and for a number of years worked 
as a journeyman plumber in Yuba County.  From 1907 to 1911, Mr. Clarke spent 
some time in the following cities:  San Francisco, Fresno, Modesto, Porterville, 
and San Rafael.  On his return to Marysville in 1911, he entered the employ of 
the Lindon Hardware Company, with whom he continued until he established a 
plumbing shop with Fred Day as a partner.  He continued in the business until 
1916, when he sold out his interest to Mr. Day.  In 1913 he had purchased his 
present home place at Tierra Buena, which was newly set to orchard.  Since then 
he has set it all to Phillips and Tuscan cling peaches.
            Mr. Clarke�s marriage in 1900, in Marysville, united him with Miss 
Gertrude Raphael, a native of Stockton, Cal.; and they are the parents of one 
son, Albert J., Jr.  For the past twenty years Mr. Clarke has been identified 
with the Maccabees of Marysville.  In politics he has always been liberal and 
progressive.  Mr. Clarke was at one time a member of the city board of health.  
He was also a member of the old Marysville Cadets.
 
History of Yuba and Sutter Counties, Historic Record Company, Los Angeles, 1924
p . 1305