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be found on many of the oldest documents in the courthouse. He located his headright in Red River County. A part of it is a few miles southwest of Clarksville and the remainder at Shawnee Prairie.

James Clark, while living at Jonesboro, made a plat of the town-site in December, 1829. This plat was found among the papers of Mr. Travis Wright of Paris, and it was signed by James Clark. Here follows a photostatic copy of said plat: [Opposite p.44]

It was while at Jonesboro that James Clark, the founder of Clarksville, represented this section as a part of Miller County, Arkansas, in the Arkansas Legislature -- not only that part called Miller County, Arkansas, but also the region west as far as settlements extended.

James Clark married Isabella H. Hanks, nee Hopkins, July 15, 1829, near the mouth of Mill Creek where the father, Frank Hopkins, then lived. Shortly afterwards James Clark with his wife settled at Jonesboro, now known as Davenport, where James Clark ran the ferry and where it was that they received Gen. Sam Houston and a squad of men into Texas in 1832. It was subsequent to this, as formerly stated, that James Clark moved from Jonesboro to the little skirt of timber surrounded by prairies that now embrace the present city of Clarksville.

Benjamin Clark, the father of James Clark who founded Clarksville, was born in North Carolina from Scotch descent, and when a young man


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The History of Clarksville and Old Red River County
Pat B. Clark   1937