Among the historical sketches penned by Miss Annie M. Lane for the American Journal of History, that touching the life of Governor John Clarke, received the highest award, and through the kindness of the author we are permitted to reproduce it.

I sometimes think there are more interesting things and people under the ground than above it, yet we who are above it do not want to go below it to get acquainted with them, but if we can find out anything from the outside we enjoy it. In a previous article, I said there was no spot in Georgia so full of buried romance as Wilkes County, and no manuscript so fascinating as the musty and yellow old records of a hundred years ago, which lie unmolested in our courthouse, especially those of 1777.

One cannot but feel after reading these books that he has been face to face with the grand old gentlemen of Revolutionary days: the men who walked our streets with their ruffled shirts—three-cornered hats and dangling swords—yet so different are they in personality and character that the weaving together of their lives makes to me a grand and beautiful fabric, "a tapestry of reminiscent threads." Some rich, some dark and sombre in shade, making a background so fitting for the crimson and purple and gold—for the conspicuous, inflaming color of impetuous natures, toned down with characters as white and cool as the snowflakes which fall upon our Southern violets.

You have but to close your eyes to the scene of today to recall ex-Governor Talbot, Governor Matthews, General Clarke, together with Jesse Mercer, Mr. Springer and Duncan C. Campbell, who were familiar figures once upon the streets of Washington.

In the painting of character sketches we would not do the individual justice if we did not remember his environments, and above all his inherited nature, for are we not all bound by heredity? My last sketch was of Jesse Mercer, now it is of John Clarke. How striking the contrast. The life of Jesse Mercer was as quiet and majestic as was his nature. John Clarke just three years his senior, born and reared at no great distance had a life of adventure. He was the son of our stalwart General Elijah Clarke and his wife, Hannah, and was the youngest soldier whose name appears upon the roster of Kettle Creek, being 13 years of age. (Battle of Kettle Creek, 1779, John Clarke, born 1766.)

I will refer you to history to convince you of how his whole nature was fired by the blood within his veins, inherited from both mother and father. He came of fighting stock in a fighting age! In "White's Historical Collections of Georgia," there is an account of the life of Hannah Clarke, who survived her husband, Elijah Clarke, twenty years, dying at the age of 90 (in 1829.) The burning of her house by a party of British and Tories is recorded, and the turning out of herself and children while General Clarke was away.

When General Clarke was so desperately wounded at Long Cane in Carolina, she started to him and was robbed of the horse on which she was riding. On one campaign she accompanied him and when she was moving from a place of danger, the horse on which she and two of her younger children were riding was shot from under her. Later, she was at the siege of Augusta. All this time General Elijah Clarke's right hand man was young John. Being reared in the army, this boy became wild and impetuous; by nature he was intense, so when cupid's dart entered his heart it was inflamed as deeply with love as it had been with hatred for the British. His love story ends with Meredith's words, "Whom first we love, we seldom wed."

About four miles from the hill on which the little battle of Kettle Creek was fought, there lived an orphan girl, the stepdaughter of Artnial Weaver, and the youngest sister of Sabina Chivers, who married Jesse Mercer. John Clarke loved this girl, but there was opposition to the union. But as yet not knowing the meaning of the word defeat, he induced her to elope with him.

It was his thought to take her to the home of a friend of his father's, Daniel Marshall, near Kiokee, but the weather was severe, and a snowstorm set in. They were compelled to stop at a farm house where lived the mother of Major Freeman (related to Dr. S. G. Hillyer.) Miss Chivers was taken ill that night with congestion of the lungs, and died. In the absence of flowers the good woman of the house adorned the dead girl with bunches of holly, entwined them in her beautiful black hair and placed them in her clasped hands. The grave they covered with the same beautiful crimson and green holly, upon which the snow recently fell. This was the first real sorrow in the life of John Clarke and many were to follow.

To some the years come and go like beautiful dreams, and life seems only as a fairy tale that is told, yet there are natures for which this cannot be. Some hands reach forth too eagerly to cull life's sweet, fair flowers, and often grasp hidden thorns. Feet that go with quick, fearless steps are most apt to be wounded by jutting stones, and alas! John Clarke found them where 'er he went through life's bright sunlight or its shaded paths, these cruel, sharp piercing thorns; those hard, cold, hurting stones.

We next see John Clarke just before he enters into his political life. From "The History of Wilkes County," in our library, I copy the following, viz: "Micajah Williamson kept a licensed tavern in the town of Washington—on record, we find that he sold with meals, drinks as follows: Good Jamaica spirits, per gill, 2d; good Madeira wine, per bottle, 4s 8d; all white wines, per battle, 3s 6d; port, per bottle, 1s 9d; good whiskey and brandy, per gill, 6d & C. & C. at that time a shilling was really 22c., a penny 7-5 of a cent."

In front of this tavern was a large picture of George Washington hanging as a swinging sign. John Clarke used to come to town, and like most men of his day got drunk. They all did not "cut up," however, as he did on such occasions. He went into stores and smashed things generally, as tradition says, but he always came back and paid for them like a gentleman. Once he came into town intoxicated and galloped down Court street and fired through the picture of General Washington before the tavern door. This was brought up against him later when he was a candidate for governor, but his friends denied it.

Soon after this he married the oldest daughter of Micajah Williamson, while Duncan C. Campbell married the youngest.

The stirring events which followed we have all learned in history, how the state was divided into two factions, the Clarkeites and those for Crawford and Troup. The state was so evenly divided that the fight was fierce. The common people and owners of small farms were for Clarke, the "gentry" and well-to-do educated folk for Crawford, and sent him to the United States Senate. Clarke and Crawford from youth had been antagonistic. Clarke, while uneducated, was brilliantly intelligent, but deeply sensitive. Crawford was polished and of courtly bearing, a man of education, but was very overbearing. Had he lived today our public school boy would say "he was always nagging at Clarke." Be that as it may, it was nip and tuck between them in the gubernatorial campaign. Clarke fought a duel with Crawford at High Shoals, and shattered his wrist. Later he tried to get Crawford to meet him again, but he persistently refused. One ugly thing to me was the horsewhipping of Judge Tate by Governor Clarke on the streets of Milledgeville, then the capital. This did Clarke no good.

General Clarke twice defeated Mr. Troup for governor. Troup was at last elected, defeating Matthew Talbot, who was on Clarke's side in 1823. General Clarke was defeated by Talbot himself. There is never an article written about Clarke that his bad spelling is not referred to. Not long ago I read in a magazine published in Georgia that Clarke spelled coffee "kaughphy." This is not true, that honor belongs to Matthews, another one of the familiar figures once on the streets of Washington. Even the best educated of our Revolutionary heroes did not spell correctly as we call it, from George Washington down.

I rather enjoy their license for I think English spelling is a tyrannical imposition. After the defeat of Clarke the tide was against him. Many untrue things were said about him and they cut him deeply. He was misunderstood often, and in chagrin he left the state.

Beneath the rough exterior there never beat a kinder heart than that in the breast of John Clarke. Although he had the brusque manner of a soldier of Revolutionary days, with those he loved he was as tender and gentle as a child. On one occasion soon after his first election to the governorship of Georgia there was a banquet given in his honor. The decorations on the white linen of the table were wreaths of holly, thought to be very beautiful and tasty. When the governor entered with his friends he stopped stock still in the doorway turning deathly pale. He ordered every piece of holly dashed from the window. The occurrence was spread far and wide all over the state and criticism ran high, and even his friends disapproved of the uncivil act of one in his high station. He never made an explanation until years afterwards.

Memories with him did not die, though beneath the ashes of the silent past. If he might call them dead, and bury them, it seems they only slept, and ere he knew, at but a word, a breath, the softest sigh, they woke once more and moved here as he thought they would not evermore. Clarke owned large tracts of land in Wilkes county (before it was cut up into other counties.) One deed is made to Wylie Pope in 1806. He reserves twenty feet where his two children are buried, Elijah Clarke and George Walton Clarke. Leaving Georgia he settled in Washington county, Florida, on the shores of the beautiful "Old Saint Andrews." Here he entertained his friends and here he spent the last ten years of his life within the sound of the restless, surging waters of the gulf. October 12th, 1832, Governor Clarke passed from this life, and eight days later his wife joined him in the Great Beyond. They were buried near the seashore in a beautiful grove of live oaks, and a marble shaft erected over them bears the following inscription:

Here reposes the remains of
John Clarke
Late Governor of Georgia
And
Nancy Clarke
His Wife
(North Face of Monument)
John Clarke
Born Feb. 28th, 1760
Died October 12th, 1832
As an officer he was vigilant and brave
As a statesman energetic and faithful
As a father and friend devoted and sincere.
(West Face)

This monument was erected by their surviving children, Ann Campbell and Wylie P. Clarke.

Not far from the monument are two little graves with flat slabs and the following inscription:

Erected to the memory of John W. and Ann W. Campbell.
Ann Hand
Born January 24th, 1823
Died Sept. 3rd, 1829
Marcus Edwin
Born Feb. 25th, 1831
Died Feb. 3rd, 1833
"Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven."

Seventy-five years have passed and the once beautiful spot is now desecrated. The oaks are cut, the tombstones are broken, and the grave of Georgia's governor is trespassed upon in a shameful manner. However, overshadowing his tomb, and keeping guard is a holly tree in all its beauty, filled with long waving wreathes of Spanish moss, and no doubt it whispers to the passing breeze that hurries on to ocean, the story of a lost love!