CHAMP CLARK
CLARK, CHAMP, son of a dentist, worked on a farm as a day-laborer, taught school, was a clerk in a store, a college graduate in arts and law, president of a college, editor of a newspaper, lawyer, city attorney, prosecuting attorney, presidential elector, representative in the state legislature, delegate to and vice-president of the Trans-Mississippi congress at Denver in 1891 and Democratic representative in the fifty-third, fifty-fifth and succeeding congresses, an author and an editor. He was born near Lawrenceburg, Anderson county, Kentucky, March 7, 1850. His father, John Hampton Clark, son of Adrial and Elizabeth (Archer) Clark, was a dentist, a man of marked intellectual power but of limited education, acquired by reading history, newspapers and the Bible. He was noted for his honesty, integrity, patriotism, right living and a determination that his children should be educated. His mother, Aletha Jane (Beauchamp) Clark, a kinswoman of Chief Justice George Robertson (1790-1874) of Kentucky, died when her son was three years old. His first known ancestor in America was John Clark, his great-great grandfather. The poverty of his father made it necessary that he should help to earn the money to pay his tuition at school; and while attending the public schools, he worked on a farm, "from the time he was able to pick up chips or pull weeds"; and he continued to do farm work for wages until he began to teach school. He was constantly urged by his father to study and to be thorough in all he undertook, and the precepts thus instilled were of more value than money to help pay for schooling. The money earned by work on the farm and such as he gained by teaching school and as clerk in a store with such aid as his father could render paid his way through college. He attended the Kentucky university and was graduated with the highest honors at Bethany college. West Virginia, A.B., 1873, when twenty-three years old. He received his master's degree at Bethany, on examination in French and German, in 1874. He was president of Marshall college, Huntington, West Virginia, 1873-74;
