https://www.amazon.com/Confederate-treasure-disbursement-accompanied-documentary/dp/B0008CGZN6?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B0008CGZN6
Myron Holley Clark was born on October 23, 1806 on a farm in the town of Naples, New York, United States. He was the son of Major Joseph and Mary (Sutton) Clark. His family was of New England origin, his grandfather, Colonel William Clark, having migrated from Berkshire County, Massachusetts, to western New York after the Revolution.
Clark received limited education.
Clark served an apprenticeship as a cabinet-maker. A successful campaign for sheriff, in 1837, helped to make him known to the voters of the county. After completing his term of office, he entered the hardware business in Canandaigua, the county seat, but retained his interest in public affairs and in taking an advanced position in the temperance and other reform movements of the day gradually extended his reputation beyond local bounds. He was one of a small group of Whig politicians prepared to unite the several diverse groups of radical voters to at least a temporary victory. His opportunity came when his Senate district sent him to Albany to uphold the cause of prohibition in the legislature. He was joined then by other legislators equally zealous but not all as convincing speakers as he. Out of this situation came a prohibition bill which passed both Senate and Assembly (1854) and for which Clark received the chief credit. Governor Seymour promptly vetoed the measure, chiefly on the ground that it deprived persons of property unconstitutionally.
Early in the summer Clark was proposed for the governorship by some of the temperance groups. An anti-Nebraska mass-meeting at Saratoga in August adopted a platform written by Horace Greeley. Clark expressed his adhesion to that platform and in the following month was nominated not only by the regular Whig convention at Syracuse but by the Free Democracy, the AntiNebraska party, and the Temperance party, each holding its own delegate convention at Auburn. Clark accepted all four nominations and always held that the Republican party of New York was thereby originated.
The ensuing campaign for the governorship was one of the most complicated in the history of New York politics. The Clark coalition won the election by a plurality of 309 votes. Clark thus came to the governor’s chair as an avowed radical in the politics of that day, bent on the placing of a prohibitory liquor law on the statute-books. Back of him stood about one-third of the state’s voters and a legislature in sympathy with his aims. A prohibition bill was passed, signed by Clark, and partially enforced for about eight months, until it was declared unconstitutional by the court of appeals.
Clark was not renominated at the end of his term because the leaders of his party were convinced that he could not be elected. Sentiment on the liquor question had undergone a change. Clark was appointed collector of internal revenue under the Lincoln administration. After serving in that office for some years he lived in retirement at Canandaigua. Once he emerged as a third- party Prohibitionist candidate for the governorship, but that was his last public appearance.
Myron Holley Clark was a member of the Whig Party.
Clark was married to Zilpha Watkins.
