Taylor's Sketchbook

“This sketchbook compiled by James E. Taylor, New York artist in 1898. He came to Paris for a vacation and to visit relatives. He became interested in the history of the area and after interviewing numerous residents made these sketches and wrote the stories accompanying them.”

“Incomplete would have been my contemplation of this Walhalla of the Warrior had I neglected the Sepulture of the Clarks three generations of whom there lay in everlasting sleep. Near the cemetery gate on four sides of a polished granite block 9 feet high engraved in intaglio is a long list of departed Clarks…awaiting Gabriel’s trump in the surrounding plot.

The inscription on the north face is most interesting- It is a record of the founder of the Family in America, Henry Clark, describing him as a native of Armagh County, Ireland who migrated to the colonies in the Reign of George III-prior to the Revolutionary War- and of his locating near Wheeling with the advance guard of Civilization, where through his boldness and sagacity he became a power in advancing the Settlements and thwarting the aggressive savages as Cornstalk, Little Turtle and other tribal chiefs found to their cost, and who died at the Wheeling Creek stockade after it’s unsuccessful investment in 1774 by the Savages, headed by the white renegade Simon Girty, ... was named Fort Henry in compliment to the bold Armagh boy-Henry Clark-though some aver that it was so christened in honor of Patrick Henry. What American has not read of its noble defense by Sheppard and the vital part Elizabeth Zane played in preventing the garrison massacre: