Hiram Clark

1795– 1853

Born in Wells, Vermont; married Thankful Gill; baptized in New York in 1835; gathered to Kirtland, Ohio, in 1836 and then to northern Missouri in 1838; driven from state by mobs the following year; served mission to Great Britain, 1839–40, laboring in England and Scotland and organizing branch on the Isle of Man; led company of Latter-day Saints from England to Nauvoo, Illinois, in 1841; filled short-term mission to central Illinois to collect money for Nauvoo Temple; called to England in 1842 to organize emigrant companies, one of which he led to Nauvoo in 1844; served third mission to England, 1844–46; arrived in Salt Lake Valley in 1849; called with his son-in-law William D. Huntington to California in 1850 to assist Amasa Lyman and Charles C. Rich; called as first president of Sandwich Islands Mission in September 1850; left Hawai‘i in March 1851 for Tahiti but returned to U.S. later that year; after brief visit to Utah, settled in San Bernardino, California, where he died in December 1853. (See Jenson, BE, 4:339; Shaffer, “Forgotten Missionary”; Shaffer, “Hiram Clark and the First LDS Hawaiian Mission”; Floyd, “Biography of Hiram Clark”; Allen, Esplin, and Whittaker, Men with a Mission, 448; Ellsworth, Journals of Addison Pratt, 468; Lyman, Payne, and Ellsworth, No Place to Call Home, 126, 531n35; Davies, Mormon Gold, 400; GQC journal, frequent references, Sept. 1850–May 1854.)