NATHANIEL CLARKE was born in Saybrook, Connecticut, July 19, 1694, the sixth child and fourth son of Major John Clark, Jr., and of his wife Rebecca, daughter of William Beamont, of Saybrook. His father was one of the legatees to whom Joshua, Sachem of the Western Niantic Indians, gave (by his will, February, 1675–6) large tracts of land in various unsettled parts of Connecticut; and Major Clark is said to have given, as early as February, 1701–2, a 2,000-acre right in his portion of these lands to the Trustees of the infant College, if it should be permanently located at Saybrook.
The township of Coventry was in 1706 erected out of lands formerly belonging to Sachem Joshua, and here Nathaniel Clarke was living in May, 1725, when he petitioned the General Assembly that he might be exempted from such inferior services as attending the military exercises of the village train-band, repairing highways, etc., on the ground “that at great expense your supplicant has been educated in your College then at Saybrook,” and that these common employments were “a disparaging imposition” on men of education. The Assembly granted the petition for release from training. At a later period he returned to Saybrook, where he spent his life on a farm near Saybrook Point. Between 1733 and 1743 he was ten times a deputy to the General Assembly. From 1734 he held a commission as Justice of the Peace.
He died in Saybrook, August 21, 1772, aged 78 years.
He married, May 10, 1715, Mary Urenne, of Norwich, who died December 30, 1754, at the age of 64. By this marriage he had a large family; at least seven sons and one daughter survived him.
The inventory of his estate amounted to £2600; it included about fifty books.
