In Andover, N. Y., March 16, 1889, after a brief illness, Decatur Maxson Clarke, in the 73d year of his age.
He was born in Brookfield, Madison Co., N. Y., Dec. 11, 1816. He was the fourth child of a family of eight children, three sons and five daughters, given to Samuel and Tacy Maxson Clarke. His father descended in a direct line from Eld. Joshua Clarke, pastor of the old Hopkinton Seventh-day Baptist Church, more than one hundred years ago. His mother was a sister of the late Dea. Alfred Maxson, of precious memory. His parents settled in Independence, Allegany Co., N. Y., when he was a small boy and the country was new. At the age of sixteen he made a profession of religion and united with the Seventh-day Baptist Church of Independence, having been baptized by the late Eld. Stillman Coon. He continued his membership with this church for more than fifty-six years, and until released for membership in the church triumphant.
He was four times married, and leaves a good wife and three sons, one by each of his first three companions, to mourn their irreparable loss. As a Christian man, he was conscientious and positive in his convictions. He was interested in every reform, enthusiastically laboring to promote them both by his personal efforts and by his means; especially was he earnest, self-sacrificing and brave in his effort to remove the saloon and promote the temperance reform.
This good and useful man, after a brief illness of nervous prostration, closed his life on Sabbath, the 16th inst., at 6:30 P. M., at his home in Andover, N. Y., aged 72 years, 3 months and 5 days. At 1 P. M., the 18th, a large congregation of kindred and friends attended his funeral services in the Seventh-day Baptist church at Independence, and we laid his remains down to the rest of the grave. "Absent from the body, present with the Lord." J. C.
