Clarke, S. A. (Samuel Asahel), 1827-1909

Samuel A. Clarke was an Oregon newspaperman, poet, and businessman. Born in Cuba in 1827, he was raised in New York City and came to California by ship in the gold rush of 1849. In 1850 he moved to Oregon and helped establish the city of Portland. He served as editor of the Oregonian and ran two other newspapers, among other businesses. He moved to Washington, D.C., around 1897 and became a librarian at the General Land Office. He covered the Modoc War as a correspondent for the New York Times in 1873, and was the author of Pioneer days in Oregon (Portland : J.K. Gill, 1905). He died in 1909.

In 1852 Samuel Clarke married Harriet Talcott Buckingham in Oregon. A native of Norwalk, Ohio, she was born in 1831 and came overland to Oregon with her brother Hiram Smith and his family in 1851. After her marriage to Samuel Clarke, the couple moved to Salem, Oregon, where they lived most of their lives. Mrs. Clarke died in Salem in 1890.

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