But coming here has even more meaning for me because of a distant family connection to this area. William Andrew Clark and his younger brother, J. Ross Clark, were instrumental in the construction of the San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad that was routed through Las Vegas just after 1900, and it was that railroad that history books say caused this town to boom. In fact, Clark County - where Las Vegas is located - was named for William A. Clark, the older brother who also became a United States senator (albeit amid the scandal of alleged purchased votes).
My family connection is this: J. Ross Clark married Miriam Evans, my great-great-grandmother's first cousin. Miriam's mother was born Margaret Holmes, the daughter of John and Margaret (Brown) Holmes of Guernsey County, Ohio. She married Zenas Evans. William Holmes, my third great-grandfather, was Margaret (Holmes) Evans's brother. My branch of the family moved to Washington County, Pennsylvania, after William Holmes's death.
Years later, the family story goes, when Miriam (Evans) Clark came back to Pennsylvania from her home in California to visit her cousins, she was stricken by the impoverished lives that they lived as coal miners. J. Ross and Miriam were very well-to-do because of his investments with his brother in railroads and copper mines, so Miriam was able to set up a regular schedule of sending money to her relatives back in Pennsylvania. My father's first cousin, Roy Bane, remembers his father and grandmother receiving Miriam's checks:
--> "My dad would receive around $1000 every quarter when I was young. This was ¼ of what Grandma Bane would get. It was divided four ways after her death. This was 1950’s money. It was a lot!! Others got checks besides Grandma. Lot of money came back to PA from Miriam!!”[i]
Roy recounted that Miriam came back to Pennsylvania in her own train car, and what a spectacle that was for the people of that area to witness.
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| Ella Harriett Clark |
J. Ross and Miriam (Evans) Clark had two children, Ella, born about 1881, and Walter Miller Clark, born about 1884. The story of their son, Walter, is a tragic one. He and his wife went on a delayed honeymoon to England in 1912 and booked passage for their return trip to the United States on the R.M.S. Titanic. Walter's wife, Virginia, was saved in lifeboat no. 4, but Walter was lost when the ship sank. The photograph at the left is Ella Harriett Clark, the daughter of J. Ross and Miriam. It was among the family pictures owned by my great-grandmother, Ella's third cousin. I also inherited a tattered old book with its cover missing, The Titanic and Other Great Sea Disasters, published in 1912, that includes the name of Walter Miller Clark.
The legacy of this Clark family is intertwined with the West, from Montana, where J. Ross and Miriam were married and the Clark brothers made part of their fortune in copper; to Los Angeles, where J. Ross and Miriam later lived and an ornate mausoleum to the memory of their son, Walter, stands in Hollywood Forever Cemetery; to here in Las Vegas, where the Clark brothers' railroad sparked exponential growth, turning an outpost in the desert into the magnificent city that exists today.
[i]
Roy Bane email message to Dawne Slater-Putt with the subject “RE: Family
HistoryArticle from Roy Bane,” dated 29 June 2011; copy in the family files of
Dawne Slater-Putt.
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