The Mysterious and unlikely ancestor William Clark--fact or fiction [mostly fiction]

I have contemplated writing something longer to share on LinkedIn and the situation with some recent research got me in a creative mood.

Readers, how would you suggest I communicate with the author of the erroneous family tree that is the focus of the following?

Ancestry.com provides ThruLines for reviewing shared DNA matches linked to common ancestors.? ?One of my brick walls is the result of an ancestor named John Clark--and extremely poor dissemination of family heritage details over the generations.

Ancestry.com proposes a William Clark (d. 1861) or Kentucky and Arkansas as John Clark's father--possibly moving the Clark lineage back another generation.? I am highly skeptical that William Clark (a 3rd great grandfather to my mother) was the father of John Clark (a 2nd great grandfather). ?As the reader can tell I've had some fun debunking the sources for this alleged ancestor.?

My Mom has nearly 100 ThruLines associated with William Clark as of March 21, 2024.? However, 95 of those are from John.? Only two are from siblings of John Clark and their centimorgan sizes are quite small--10cM and 8cM--dubious at best for substantive ThruLines.

There has been a slow growth of ThruLines for my mother that link William (d. in Arkansas in 1861) to my definite ancestor John Clark (d. 1899) but I believe the number of trees (now up to 22) link William as the father of John based on extremely bad research from one tree that has been copied to other trees.? ? Where do I begin to point out the inconsistencies in the information?? I will start with the death records presented in the various sources.

The top-ranked family tree has 18 records for William and I will review the sources in this composition.

At least some of the censuses listed among the 18 records could be a fit for William being a resident of Laurel County, Kentucky in 1840 and in Arkansas before his death in 1861.? However, the 1865 New York census is not a fit and is one of several suggested hints that obviously have crept into multiple trees with the only common denominator being the name "William Clark".? ?

The England and Wales National Probate source is another fiction.? The page linked from that source is four 3 different William Clarks who died in England in 1861.? Remember, the William Clark of the ThruLine is supposed to have died in Arkansas in 1861.

While we are on the subject of the death of William Clark in 1861 let's look at another source, U. S. Register of Deaths of Volunteers, 1861-1865.? The link in that source is a page listing William Clark of Company F, 32nd Ohio Infantry.? The ledger page does not immediately name the location of his death.? His cause of death is listed as "Vul. sclopet" an abbreviation of the Latin for "gunshot wound.". An Ohio regimental publication listed the same soldier with their death in battle at Camp Allegheny, West Virginia.

A different military source is U. S. Army Register of Enlistments.? The link in that source is for a page with multiple William Clarks.? Among the several Williams is entry 1764, a William Clark who was a native of Baltimore.? He enlisted in September 1818 at Sackett's Harbor (on Lake Ontario in New York) and appears to have deserted a month later.??

Next let's look at the birth sources.? The family tree with so many sources for William gives a birth year of 1798.? This is highly unlikely for William if his son John was born in 1813.? Some trees give his birth as 1793.? That would be a better fit.? I have seen a tree that give John's place of death in 1899 at Kentucky when he actually died in Kansas.? A tree also names John's wife as Margaret and has her dying in 1860.? This obviously contradicts the documentation of John and his wife Mary Jane Kendall (d. in Kansas in 1890).? The Margaret Clark who died in 1860 has a photograph in a style obviously dating from the last decades of the 1800s--a further highly unlikely option for a person who died in 1860.

If we look at the marriage record section of sources the Kentucky marriage source could theoretically be a fit for the William from Kentucky.? The marriage in England in 1847 is not.?

Multiple trees name Mary Polly (Arthur) Clark (born 1798) as the wife of William.? [One tree links her with a christening--hers--in Wales in 1825!].? Trees on Ancestry list a marriage date of January 26, 1815 (two years after the birth of my ancestor John).? ?

I will cover one final category of the sources for William Clark.? U.S. and Canada Passenger and Immigration Lists Index is the choice for a William Clark that arrived in 1776.? ?That William is yet another square peg in a round hole that has been pounded into the sources for my alleged ancestor.? ?The same William that arrived in America during the year that independence was declared and survived through a long life before his death in battle in the Civil War--a most remarkable ThruLine.?

Further research mistakes were made that merged a John Franklin Clark (of Kentucky) with my John Clark (of Kentucky, Indiana, Iowa and Kansas), compounding the issues already present in the William Clark research.? My John Clark never used a middle name and the usage of middle names was still rather uncommon in his era.? John Franklin Clark married a Margaret Wiggins in May 1833 and their first child (the lists of their children varies between trees) was William Douglas Clark (1834-1875).? Their other children were Mary, Alston, William, Rose, Elizabeth, John Calvin, Aaron, Louisa, etc.? My John Clark married Mary Jane Kendall in 1835 in Indiana.? Nancy, Joshua, William, John, Ruth, Mary, Jacob, Samuel, etc.

I will continue to review ThruLines and sources.? Hopefully additional resources and DNA matches will reveal substantive documentation for the Clark lineage.