(20 June 1799-14 July 1872), clergyman. Born at Inverness, Scotland. After completing his education at the University of Aberdeen, he was licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Inverness. He came to Canada in 1838. He served for about a year as a missionary clergyman at Martintown and Indian Lands, before being inducted as the resident clergyman at Indian Lands on 28 Aug. 1839. This charge, which was very large, included the Presbyterian congregations of Kenyon and Roxborough. He had a manse in the 17th concession of Indian Lands about a mile east of what is now Maxville. His congregation at this time was the one to which the Rev. Daniel Gordon, Ralph Connor’s father, later ministered. The first church building at what is now Dunvegan was built in 1840 during the Rev. Daniel Clark’s pastorate. At the time there were about 50 Presbyterian families in the congregation there.

     When the Disruption of 1843 divided the Presbyterian Church in Scotland and Canada, Clark took the side of the Free Church. He was the only one among the nine clergymen in the Glengarry Presbytery to do so. Caught up the difficulties and disputes that followed the Disruption, he perhaps extended his energies too widely by occasionally ministering to Free Church Presbyterians over a wide territory extending into what is now western Quebec. At any rate, he seems to have caused discontent among some of his followers and to have become unhappy himself about his position, with the result that he resigned from his Indian Lands pastorate effective 11 June 1852. He lived mainly in GC for the rest of his life. In these years, he taught school, and in his retirement lived at Dalkeith, in the home of his daughter Catherine A. and her husband William Robertson. Another daughter, Ann Maria, also married a Robertson: John Robertson. Daniel Clark is buried at Kirk Hill United Church (West Church) cemetery where his name is spelled Clarke on his gravestone. The Robertson family gravestone is next to his. The Rev. Daniel Clark was married at Martintown on 11 Feb. 1840 to Ann McMartin, the daughter of Peter McMartin of Martintown. She died 9 Sept. 1845 at the Indian lands manse, aged 35 or less, and has a gravestone or memorial marker at St. Andrew’s United Church cemetery, Martintown. The Rev. Daniel Clark was formative in the history of GC Presbyterianism and is a key figure in the transition from pioneer conditions to the settled congregations of the late 19th century. He seems to have been a gentle self-denying, unassertive man, unsuited to conditions of strife. Clark preached in Gaelic as well as English. The Rev. John King, who severely criticizes Clark’s successor in the pastorate of Indian Lands, the Rev. Daniel Gordon, speaks favourably of Clark as “a man of a liberal mind,” who allowed his church to be used for Baptist services.

MacMillan, Kirk, and MacMillan, Kenyon Presbyterian Church. The passages relating to Clark in these works amount to a good life of him several times the length of the average Dictionary of Canadian Biography life. * Wilson, MN, 61 * gravestones as cited * Rev John King, MS journal, Canadian Baptist Archives, McMaster University * obituary, The Home and Foreign Record of the Canada Presbyterian Church (1872) 298-300