John Clark was born in Harpswell, Maine, on 7 April 1765¹ in what was then the county of Cumberland in the eastern district of Massachusetts. His parents were Josiah Clarke and Sarah (Nute) Clarke,² Josiah being a descendent of both John Clarke and John Taylor, immigrant ancestors who arrived in Boston on the ship "Unity" late in 1650.³ They did not arrive as willing immigrants but rather in chains, prisoners of war from Oliver Cromwell's defeat of the Presbyterian Scots at the Battle of Dunbar in that same year. They were sold as indentured servants to John Winthrop, Jr. and Richard Leader,⁴ services that they survived and then lived on to establish families in colonial Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine. By the time of Josiah Clarke's generation on the eve of the American Revolution, the Clarke family in Harpswell seems to have become rather well-to-do. Josiah was a fisherman who had the wherewithal to purchase a great deal of real estate, much of which was situated on today's Bailey Island in Penobscot Bay on the coast of Maine.⁵
 
Little is known of the details of John Clarke's early years. We do know his mother died in 1777 when he was only twelve.⁶  The initial actions of the Revolutionary War in the District of Maine largely took place in 1775 with the burning of Falmouth, Arnold's Expedition up the Kennebec to attack Quebec, and the Margaretta affair at Machias. 

Maine communities formed committees of safety and militia companies, as did the rest of Massachusetts, but other than some privateering on the coast, not much seemed to happen in the eastern district once the British abandoned Boston in the spring of 1776. That all changed in the late spring of 1779 when a small British flotilla arrived in Penobscot Bay with two regiments of soldiers to occupy the Tory town of Majabigwaduce on its eastern shore.⁷  It did not take long for the Massachusetts government to learn of the return of English troops to Massachusetts soil, and their reaction was both rapid and significant. The state hastily assembled an extraordinary expedition to retake the lost town. The Continental Congress's only contribution was three Continental Navy ships which happened to be anchored at the time in Boston harbor; the frigate Warren, the brig Diligence, and the sloop Providence.⁸ This contribution resulted in the commanding officer of the Warren, Captain Saltonstall, assuming command of the 39-vessel fleet that would transport and defend an anticipated 1500 militia troops in an assault on the British garrison.^9,10 These troops were all to come from militia companies from Massachusett's three eastern counties; York, Cumberland, and Lincoln.[xi]  General Samuel Lovell, a Massachusetts militia officer, would command the land force.¹²
 
The problem with this plan began with finding 1500 suitable militia troops. Massachusetts was deeply committed to the American Revolution and had already sent large numbers of military-age men to fill the ranks of the Continental Army. The eastern counties were a thinly populated frontier, to begin with, and the men remaining at this point in the war were the old, the infirm, or young boys left behind to work the farms.¹³ In spite of drastic efforts to recruit or impress the men required, the final militia muster before boarding their ships for the expedition revealed only 893 soldiers.¹⁴ Samuel McCobb's regiment, which included militia from both York and Lincoln counties, was particularly shorthanded. This possibly explains why the 14-year-old John Clark ended up with McCobb in Captain Archibald McCallister's company when both his father, Josiah, and future brother-in-law, William Wilson, both also of Harpswell, mustered with Colonel Jonathan Mitchell's Cumberland regiment.^15,16,17 John Clark's youth, however, was not unusual that day. Peleg Wadsworth, the expedition's second-in-command, would later write that,
 
"One-fourth part of the Troops then appear'd to be Small Boys & old men, & unfit for the service."¹⁸
 
It was an inauspicious beginning to an operation that would eventually come to a disastrous end. The Expedition did manage to execute an impressive amphibious landing that involved successfully scaling a 100-foot cliff under intense fire. But after advancing to a position within sight of the only partially completed British fortification defending the town, Lovell ordered his troops to stop and dig in. What followed was two weeks of delay as Lovell and Saltonstall bickered about how to proceed. The delay gave the British time to organize a relief force consisting of troops and a squadron of warships that arrived in Penobscot Bay on 13 August 1779,¹⁹ effectively trapping the Massachusetts forces in the far northern corner of the bay. They hastily reboarded their ships and attempted to escape up the Penobscot River. Wind and tide were not with them, however, and most of the transports had to be beached on the west side of the river at Sandy Point and burned to prevent their capture. Their crews and troops escaped into the still-dense Maine forest and found their way eventually to their homes. A few of the warships managed to make it up the river to the head of navigation in Bangor, but they, too, were eventually burned or blown up. Every single American vessel was captured or destroyed.²⁰ It was a disaster. What is worse, the failed expedition had bankrupted the State of Massachusetts and crippled its ability to fund itself for the rest of the war.²¹
 
John Clark, Josiah Clarke, and William Wilson all survived and managed to return to Harpswell. But in spite of the negative experience of the Penobscot Expedition, John Clark was not finished with the war. The British now controlled the waters of Penobscot Bay and used their new base at Majabigwaduce (now Castine) to raid the rebel settlements along its western shore. 

The General Court appointed Peleg Wadsworth to assemble a local militia unit of 600 men to protect the shoreline between Falmouth (now Portland) and Machias.²²  Wadsworth clearly attempted to do his best, but just as had happened in the Penobscot Expedition, he couldn't recruit the men he needed. 

In addition, cash-strapped Massachusetts was never able to supply Wadsworth adequately. Eventually, the troops even had to resort to fishing to keep themselves fed.²³ Wadsworth, realizing he couldn't continue to even provision or supply his forces, eventually terminated their enlistments early.²⁴ Ironically, Wadsworth himself was captured by a Tory raid on his headquarters and imprisoned in Castine. 

He managed to escape, but once free, left Maine completely for his home in Plymouth, Massachusetts, where he remained until the end of the war.^25,26 The Maine coast was left completely unprotected, and the raiding continued unopposed until Cornwallis's surrender in 1781 finally brought the war to an effective end.²⁷
 
In the midst of these events, John Clark resurfaces in the following record of service;
 
"Private, John Blunt's co., Col. Prime's regt. 6 March 1780, to 6 September, 1780, under Brig. Gen. Wadsworth in eastern Mass."²⁸ Gould also states he served at some point as a private in Lt. Jeremiah Colburn's Company in Camden, Maine.²⁹
 
Finally, there is a family history written by a descendent of William Wilson, William Blake Josephs, that contains the transcript of a militia roll for a Harpswell company in 1782 that Wilson found in the Maine Genealogical Society Library in Portland about 1900. The roll is described as follows;
 
"Rolls of Companys in the Continental Service from Brunswick, Harpswell, and North Yarmouth in 1782…A Return of Capt Jotham Doyle's Co of Harpswell Maine."³⁰ 
 
The roll, specifically dated 22 July 1782, lists Joseph (Josiah) Clarke, John Clark, and William Wilson. Josiah is listed twice, in the general muster and as a paid member of the "alarm list."³¹
 
The same history documents the Clark and Wilson families, their children, and the relationships between them. William Wilson married Martha Clark, John's sister. John Clark married Mary "Polly" Wilson, William's sister, on 16 November 1783 in Harpswell. In 1794, it was John Clark who led William Wilson, Sr., his young son William, Jr., Martha, and Polly up the coast from Harpswell to the St George River in 1794. 

While the Wilsons found land on Herring Gut to settle, John was first located in South Thomaston. Later, in 1799, he purchased the northern 3/4 of Smith's Island on Long Cove, a bit further up the coast, and made a farm there.³² A young fisherman, Nathaniel Seavey, son of Revolutionary veteran Joseph Seavey, owned the remaining southern end of the island and would marry John Clark's daughter Miriam in the future.³³ By 1824 Smith's Island came to be known as "Clark and Sevey's Island"³⁴ and then later just as "Clark's Island," a name that it continues to be called today. A large part of Clark's Island was acquired by the Maine Coast Heritage Trust in 2020 and is now accessible to the public for hiking and recreation.³⁵
 
Albert Smalley, a recent local historian of the St George area, had a theory that John Clark had immigrated from England. This opinion can be found in some references but is clearly mistaken. 

John Clark was one of the Clarks from Harpswell, as the intermarriages with the Harpswell Wilsons in Harpswell make clear.
 
John Clark and Polly Wilson had the following children;  John, Jr.,³⁶ Martha, Lettice, Betsey, Mary, Miriam, Serena, Ann, and Catherine (who died young).³⁷
 
There is a record of further militia service after the American Revolution. 

John Clark, and his son, John Clark, Jr., both served during the War of 1812 when the British had once again seized and fortified Castine. The substantial earthworks of Fort George and the "British Canal" still visible there today were the result of the 1814 British occupation, not the Fort George of the Revolution, which was only a hastily thrown-together log structure with walls barely four feet high.³⁸  Needless to say, memories of the depredations during the Revolution were fresh, and the Maine coast mobilized to meet the threat. 

Specifically, John Clark served as a private at Thomaston in Captain T. Kenny's Company, Lieutenant-Colonel E. Foot's Regiment was raised in St George from 3 September to 9 September and discharged 5 November 1814.³⁹ Son John Clark, Jr. served as a private at Camden in Captain T. Kenny's Detached County, Lieutenant-Colonel E. Foot's Regiment, raised at St George, from 1 October to 9 November.^40,41
 
John Clark died on 27 September 1844. His wife Polly died on 25 February 1851. They are buried together in the North Parish Cemetery in St George, Knox, Maine, their headstones still connected now as they were during their long, eventful lives.

Sources:

1. DAR RC #A204273
2. heirloomsreunited.com , Josephs, William Blake, "William Wilson of Harpswell, Maine…", unpublished work, Portland, Maine, 1901, pgs 160-165
3. spows.org, Battle of Dunbar, Prisoner Profiles; Prisoners in Massachusetts (Lynn, John Clark); Prisoners in Maine (Kittery, John Taylor, d. Sarah Taylor m. Elisha Clarke, child Josiah Clark m. Mary Wingate)
4. Ibid.
5. heirloomsreunited.com , Josephs, William Blake, "William Wilson of Harpswell, Maine…", unpublished work, Portland, Maine, 1901, pgs 160, 161
6. DAR RC #A204273
7. Buker, George E., "The Penobscot Expedition," Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 2002, pgs 7-9 
8. Ibid., pg 18
9. Ibid., pgs 27-31
10. Gould, Edward Kalloch, "Storming the Heights, Maine's Embattled Farmers at Castine in the Revolution," The Courier-Gazette Press, Rockland, Maine, 1932, pg 5
11. Ibid., pg 8
12. Ibid., pg 8
13. Gould, Edward Kalloch, "British and Tory Marauders on the Penobscot," Rockland, Maine, 1932, pg 5
14. Buker, George E., "The Penobscot Expedition," Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 2002, pg 25
15. MSSAR, Vol 3, pg 543
16. MSSAR, Vol 3, pg 552
17. MSSAR, Vol 17, pg 583
18. Buker, George E., "The Penobscot Expedition," Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 2002, pg 26
19. Ibid., pg 77
20. Hunter, James W., "The Penobscot Expedition Archaeological Project: Field Investigations 2000 and 2001," Naval Historical Center, Washington DC, 2003
21. Greenburg, Michael M ., "The Court-Martial of Paul Revere," University Press of New England, Lebanon, NH, 2014, pg 151
22. Leamon, James S., "The Search for Security Maine after Penobscot" Maine History 21, 3 (1982): 119-154. https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mainehistoryjournal/vol21/iss3/2 pg 123
23. Ibid., pg 127
24. Ibid., pg 128
25. Shipton, Clifford K., "Peleg Wadsworth," Maine History 15, 5 (1976): 211-226. https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mainehistoryjournal/vol15/iss5/4 , pg 217
26. Dwight, Timothy, "Travels in New England and New York," Vol 2, pgs 199-200
27. Gould, Edward Kalloch, "British and Tory Marauders on the Penobscot," Rockland, Maine, 1932, pgs 31, 32
28. MASSAR, Vol 3, pg 543
29. Gould, Edward K., "Revolutionary Soldiers & Sailors of Knox County, Maine and Their Descendants," unpublished manuscript in library of the Maine Historical Society, Portland, Maine, 1930, pg 34
30. heirloomsreunited.com , Josephs, William Blake, "William Wilson of Harpswell, Maine…", unpublished work, Portland, Maine, 1901, pgs 102-107
31. Ibid.
32. Knox Deeds WHL, book 9, pg 390
33. Knox Deeds WHL,  book 15, pg 76
34. McLane, Charles & Carol, "Islands of the Mid-Maine Coast, Penobscot Bay," Vol 1, The Island Institute, Rockland, Maine, pg 70
35. mcht.org , Preserves, Midcoast Region, Clark’s Island
36. findagrave.com , Memorial #134090487
37. heirloomsreunited.com , Josephs, William Blake, "William Wilson of Harpswell, Maine…", unpublished work, Portland, Maine, 1901, pg 12
38. Gould, Edward Kalloch, "Storming the Heights, Maine's Embattled Farmers at Castine in the Revolution," The Courier-Gazette Press, Rockland, Maine, 1932, pg 13
39. Pearson, Gardner W., "Records of the Massachusetts Volunteer Militia, Called out by the Governor of Massachusetts to suppress a Threatened Invasion during the War of 1812-1814," Wright&Potter Printing Co., 1913,  pg 206
40. Ibid.
41. findagrave.com , Memorial # 134090487