The historic Clark Farm was comprised of 320 acres on the east side of M-24, from Scripps Road south to Greenshield Road.
It was acquired from the U.S. Government in 130 by Elijah B. Clark at a cost of $1.25 per acre. Most of the acreage remained in the Clark family for more than 100 years.
In 1830, Elijah and Asa W. Owen, Sr., a close neighbor in Pennsylvania, purchased their tracts of land in what is now Orion Township.
The Orion tract was in the same area on the west side of what is now M-24. In 1831, they both emigrated to Michigan with their families.
At that time, they would have had to travel on the Erie Canal to Buffalo, New York, then take the steamboat to Detroit, a three-day crossing of Lake Erie.
After reaching Detroit, they would have hired a wagon and team to take them over a very rough road to Royal Oak, another full day away.
The wagon would have been occupied by their household goods, carpenter’s tool chest, and occasionally other family members. Usually they walked and floundered.
They made the trip from Royal Oak to Jesse Decker’s log house at the Decker settlement near what are now Greenshield and Kern roads.
At the time, the Clark family consisted of Elijah, his wife Mary Ann, and children, Elizabeth, Loretta, Katherine, Tracy Ann and Romaine, who at five was the youngest.
The family remained at the Decker settlementfor about three weeks while the first log house was being built on what is now Scripps Road, east of M-24.
The log house probably had a keeping room and two bedrooms on the first floor, along with a sleeping loft above. The chimney was an elaborate affair constructed of stone and mortar at the base and sticks and mud for a superstructure.
Inside was an open fireplace with swinging cranes for pots and kettles, while a mud over for baking bread was located outside.
Among the outstanding features of those early years were the loom and spinning wheel, the scythe, the cradle, a huge break-up plow, a lumbering team of oxen, an eight-foot stockade near the house where a small flock of sheep were protected from the wolves and wild hogs that subsisted on acorns, and cattle whose winter protection and feast were limited to a stack of straw.
The Nipissing Indian Trail, which meandered from Detroit to Lapeer via Rochester, diagonally crossedthe Clark Farm.
This could have been called Bald Mountain Road, running between Pontiac and Orin. Parts of the road can be seen today, running south off of E. Clarkston Road and south and north off Silver Bell Road. This was likely the first road buildt in 1839 that ran more or less directly between Orion and Pontiac.
Although there is evidence of a permanent Indian settlement in Orion Towship, there are indications of an Indian Council ground, a perfectly circular mound on the Clark property.
Also in evidence were Indian caches built in and covered with earth where they stored their corn.
Elijah Bailey Clark was born in Connecticut on Nov. 23, 1792, and died on his Orion Township farm ion 1884 at the age of 91.
Elijah Bailey Clark was a farmer and was active in government and education. He was supervisor of Orion in 1837-38 and served Oakland County in the state legislature in 1847.
He married Mary Ann Yerkes in Pennsylvania on March 6, 1816, and they had 10 children. Mary Ann died in Orion in 1864, ending a long and fulfilling love affair for the couple.
In 1834, the pioneers of Orion Township decided they needed a school. Among those were Elijah B. Clark, Asa Owen Sr., Powell Carpenter Sr. and representatives of the Decker, Bigler and McVean families. They decided to hold a working bee to cut logs, puddle mortar with their oxen, and piled stone for their first school house, known as Clark’s Corners (at the corner of M-24 and Greenshield.
It was part of the Clark Farm and later became Clark School. Over the years, Clark School would occupy three other locations along M-24 between Greenshield and Scripps roads.
The final location was a typical one-room schoolhouse which educated children from the surrounding farms for students in grades 1-8.
The teachers who taught at Clark reads like a local who’s who list, with names like: Belles, Casamper, Clark, Owen, Howarth, Kitchen, Harding, Gingell and Porritt. After consolidating with the Lake Orion school district, the Clark School was closed in 1950, representing the end of an era.
J.Y. Clark, son of Rongine Clark, continued to farm the north portion of the farm. He married Carrie B. Letts of Orion Township in 1889, and later graduated from Michigan Agricultural College (MSU).
He eventually took a prominent role in various farmers? organizations and was active in educational, political and fraternal organizations.
His farm was sold in the 1940s. The site is now the home of the Round Tree subdivision on the east side of M-24, south of Scripps.
Romaine Clark Jr.continued to farm the south portion of the Clark farm.
He was married to Edith L. Beardsley and they had two children, Ferris B. Clark and Kenneth M. Clark.
Ferris would become supervisor of Orion Township in the late 1940s and early 1950s, following in the family tradition of public service.
His portion of the Clark farm is now in the Perry Acres subdivision on the east side of M-24.
Dan Clark, the great-great-great grandson of E.B. Clark, is still prominent in the Lake Orion community.
He owns the Tire Warehouse and just finished construction of a new building on M-24, south of Church Street.
He has shown a keen interest in local history by designing his new building to resemble the Michigan Central Depot built in 1901.
The depot had been located on the southeast corner of M-24 and Flint Street.
Keep reading The Review for more local history lessons from the desk and memories of Lake Orion historian James Ingram.