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Note: Lida Clark wrote in 1945, "Robert Clark cam to Michigan in 1835. He was a millwright and mills erected under his supervision soon dotted the southeastern section of the state. The building of mills helped to develop this new country for roads were difficult and ox teams slow. After equipping and acquiring the mill at Bellevville, he decided to make his home there. After marriage to Violett Clark, they moved to a farm just west of her mother's.
Robert Clark, Daniel Quirk, and George Hill filed the orginal plat of 86 lots of Belleville in 1848. Mr. Hill soon moved away. A general store and lumber yard was owned by the other two and when Mr. Quirk moved to Ypsilanti, his interest was bought by Robert Clark. The site of the Methodist Church was donated by him, and he was interested and contributed to practically every improvement of his time. When the Baptist Church was built, he contributed $100 - and was given a deed to a pew, which in those days, had a door of its own. He gave generously when the Episcopal church was built, a church of which he was member. He was a charter member of the Masonic Lodge at Belleville. He was elected to the Legislature in 1862, and for several years, legislative reports were sent addressed to Hon. Robert Patterson Clark.
He was on the school board of the French Landing Schools many times and on the committee that planned the first frame school building with its home-made desks and seats of plankes of white wood and running parallel to the side walls. Those against the walls were two steps up whild the row in fromt one step up from the central main floor. he was twonship librarian. He was a man of integrity and many times was appointed administrator of estates. He never took the full fee entitled to him except in one instance when the only heir lived outside the state. In one case the estate was so small that he charged nothing for his services even paying his own fare to Detroit, the county seat. Judge Durfee responded by saying, "If you can do that Mr. Clark, so can I."
Truman Dean said to his son Loren, when there was a problem they could not settle, "Go ask Robert Clark. He will tell you what to do." He was a successful farmer and a kind and quietly prideful father of his family of wife and 6 children.
In his young manhood days, he was so full of life and vigor that it was said of him, "Robert Clark hasn't time to walk. He is always on the run."
A note from writings of Virginia Averill Shook ZOOK (his grandaughter) indicates he left Claremont, NH when he was 7 years old - 1817, the year after the Mt. Tambura volcanic eruption that caused the devastating climactic changes in New England, called the Year without a Summer.
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