HYRUM DON CARLOS CLARK

by Elwin Clark

My Dear Relations and Friends:

It is my privilege today to make a few remarks about my father, to whom we are paying honor on this occasion.

I have gathered this information largely from accounts by my brother Heber D., my sisters Edna Erickson and Herma Smith, and from my own memory.

Hyrum Don Carlos Clark was born at Farmington, Utah, February 13, 1856, being the fifth son and sixth child of Ezra T. Clark and Mary Stevenson. He spent his childhood and youth largely in Farmington as part of his father’s very large and prosperous family, suffering the privations and relishing the freedoms and joys of pioneer life. He was also occupied, at times, on his father’s ranch at Georgetown, Idaho, as also at his holdings at Morgan, Utah. From what I have been able to learn, he was a good, active, friendly, obedient son. In other words, he was a good scout. On numerous occasions while I was growing up, either to chide or encourage me, he would say, and I quote, “When I was a boy” or “When I was your age,” and then he would discourse at some length about some fine or extraordinary achievement -- so I would assume he was a normal boy.

Father’s temporary sojourns in Morgan were only five miles from Porterville where my mother, Eliza Porter was growing up. They were married November 11, 1880 in the old Endowment House.

The Ezra T. Clark family was a very patriarchal family. The children settled close around the parents in what was practically communal life, which lasted until just a few years before grandfather’s death. Father and Mother felt that they wanted to be away on their own; maybe they believed that “a man should leave his father and his mother and cleave unto his wife.” So early

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