The folks at the Marion Area Historical Museum are gearing up to celebrate Clark Day, Saturday, September 10, 2022, Noon to 3pm. It has been a difficult couple of years for the group and they are looking forward to a good old fashioned get together. As usual the menu is a big pot of tasty hobo stew (boiled dinner), expertly cooked up by Jim Baughan and Bernard Prielipp, of course. This is accompanied by an assortment of breads and cookies and of course, country lemonade.
The group also invites all to stroll about the museum and see what has changed and what is new since the last gathering. You never know what things from Marion’s past you might find, and that could include some magic thing from your childhood. You never know what’s to be found in ‘Marion’s Attic’.
At this Clark Day we remember and greatly miss our dedicated and most capable curator, the late Donna Geyer. It was she who set the standard with the first Clark Day in September 2001, and it was she who most capably guided each one since.
As a side note, it was Donna who preferred the term hobo stew over boiled dinner. I preferred the latter. We chuckled over this little thing in our advertising and how something so simple, this one food, could be called two different things in two towns so close (Marion and Evart). We always billed it as hobo stew and I use boiled dinner today purely to clarify the ingredients for some. I’m sure she would forgive me. Please join us at the Museum for good food and good conversation. Mark your calendar.
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Chances are, if you grew up here, or have any familial ties whatsoever to our little village, you’ve heard the tales of the woman once called “Mrs. Marion”.
We all grew up hearing that our town was named for Christopher Clark’s wife, the first resident woman at this site, Mary Hixon Clark. But it isn’t necessarily so. It would appear that as the years passed, Mary Clark, the lumber camp jack of many trades, became Marion Clark, the pioneer woman for whom a village and township were named. She did not discourage the story and from all accounts, Mrs. Clark relished that reputation.
By all accounts she wasn’t afraid of the unsettled woods she came to in 1875, or the hard work of the lumber camp, the task of starting a school and overseeing others, or of running a store and post office in her home. She was tough. Mary Hixon Clark appears to have possessed many of the qualities most folks look for in a founder.
The Clark’s seem to have been a good couple for the settler business. They knew the lumber trade and a good location when they saw one. This was a good spot for a mill and dam. Clark was prudent in his land purchases, and offered up much of the platted downtown, as lots for sale. Clark could sell a lot one day, and sell the new owner lumber to build on the next.
Both of the Clarks promoted the new town when and where they could. Mrs. Clark frequently sent news items to the Evart Review, promoting the doings in the new town and bragging about its virtues. It is rumored that she was the informative “Northern Spark”, the name used by the Marion correspondent.
From numerous accounts, unearthed at the time of the centennial, it is more than likely that both village and township were named for like places in Ohio from which other early settlers migrated. The township’s first supervisor, one Henry A. Clark, no relation, claimed he was chosen to name both and did so for Marion, for his boyhood home in Harding Co., Ohio.
Isaac Hall of Canadian origin, who came to Michigan via Ohio, was truly an early pioneer to the area. He settled three miles west of the Clark’s and claimed that he named the township for his old home in Marion County, Ohio.
Until her death, Marion Clark maintained that both were named for her.
By all accounts, and any way you slice it, Mary Hixon Clark was the first woman to live along this stretch of the Middle Branch and at the spot which would become Marion, Michigan. In addition to her other firsts, she was also the first school commissioner and first teacher at the settlement of Marion, and you can’t take any of her firsts away from her. She and Mr. Clark, along with other settlers, like Chadwick and Chapin, established and built businesses and set Marion, Michigan on her long path. The Clarks worked hard to make this a place attractive to all who came this way. Mary Clark was indeed the first prominent woman in Marion, and certainly not the last.
Christopher Clark died in 1911. Mrs. Clark died at her home, which overlooked the Mill Pond from the corner of Clark and Water Street, in 1933 and is buried next to her husband in the family plot in Greenwood Cemetery.
In the long run, as it is with most towns and cities in northern Michigan, Marion’s founders and her roots come from as many places as do her residents.
Our photo should say “Hurry on down to the Marion Museum for Clark Day!” Mark your calendars for September 10.
