Holbrook line: John Clarke 1642-1686

 It should be easier to make sense of this man's life than it is.  He was the son of Robert Clarke, Surveyor-General of Maryland (and probably first wife Eleanor), and Robert's life is fairly well documented.  So if John's, except that he seems to have been in more than one place at the same time, and to have been older than the date I've used indicates, if indeed he was granted land in 1655 for headrights to several people.  I suspect we could be dealing with more than one John Clarke, so I'll try to include only the information I think is most likely to be correct here.  The other possibility is that John was born earlier, perhaps in England, and thus would have been old enough to have had head rights in 1655.  I think more research needs to be done about this.

John is frequently referred to as "Gent" or "planter" in land records.  It makes sense that he would have owned quite a bit of land, as his father probably looked out for his son's interests while making his surveys, as well as leaving him extra land as the oldest son.  John married Ann at some point.  Most trees show his wife to be Ann Dent, but there are some other possibilities and I'm not yet ready to hazard a guess as to who his wife was.  

We know that there were five children living when John wrote his will in 1685-John, Robert, Benjamin, Franklin, and Ann.  There may have been other children born to the couple who were not alive at the time the will was written.  John left a tract of 1000 acres to his children, and the rest of his land and estate to his wife, to do with as she wished.  When Ann died, any remaining land or estate was to go to his eldest son, John. 

His land, or at least part of it, seems to have been located on the west side of the Wicomico River, which in turn was a tributary of the Potomac River.  This land he sold or gave to his brother Thomas in 1681.  He evidently lived on the border of Charles County and St Mary's County, so records can be found in both counties, but I'm not sure where he was living at the time of his death. 

Basically, except for some land transactions, this is what we know of John.  His father was Catholic but we don't know if John was also Catholic, or whether he was of the Anglican church.  Maryland started out as a tolerant colony but became involved in bitter religious disputes.  Perhaps he kept whatever religious beliefs he had to himself.  Because he owned a lot of land and grew tobacco, we can guess that his lands were farmed by either slaves or indentured servants, or both.  (The persons he was granted head rights for, if this is the correct John Clarke, may well have served out their indenture on his lands.  At this time in Maryland history, indentured servants were common, as were native American slaves and those imported from Africa, so it could have been any, all, or some combination of the above.  No slaves are mentioned in his will and I haven't yet located an inventory.  

There are a lot of reference books about the early days of St Mary's and Charles Counties, but unfortunately they don't seem to be readily available on line.  When I am able to return to library haunting, I will want to see what more I can learn of our ancestor, John Clarke.  There are probably stories to tell!

The line of descent is:

John Clarke-Ann

Robert Clarke-Selina Smith

Hannah Clarke-James Amos 

Robert Amos-Martha McComas

Robert Amos-Elizabeth Amos

Martha Amos-Peter Black

Elizabeth Black-Isaac Hetrick

Mary Alice Hetrick-Louis Stanard

Etta Stanard-Loren Holbrook

Gladys Holbrook-Richard Allen

Their descendants