Horace F. Clark
American politician (1815-1873)
Horace Francis Clark (November 29, 1815 – June 19, 1873) was an American politician and railroad executive who served two terms as a U.S. representative from New York from 1857 to 1861.
Biography
Clark was born in Southbury, Connecticut on November 29, 1815, the son of Reverend Daniel Atkinson Clark (1779-1840) and Eliza (Barker) Clark (1787-1864). In 1833 Clark graduated from Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. He studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1837, and commenced practice in New York City. In 1848 he married Maria Louisa Vanderbilt, the daughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt, and they were the parents of a daughter, Mary Louise, wife of Clarence Lyman Collins, a Wall Street cotton broker (and mother of Edith Lyman Collins, who became the Polish Countess Czaykowski in 1897, and the French Marquise de Maleissye in 1911). Mary Louise Clark Collins died in 1894. As a result of his family connection to Vanderbilt, Clark became involved in several of Vanderbilt's business ventures, including shipping, banking, and railroads.
Tenure in Congress
In 1856, Clark was elected to Congress as a Democrat, and he was reelected in 1858 as an Anti-Lecompton Democrat. Clark served in the Thirty-fifth and Thirty-sixth Congresses (March 4, 1857 to March 3, 1861).
Later career
Clark returned to his business interests after leaving Congress, and served as president of the Union Trust Company, Union Pacific Railroad, Michigan Southern Railroad, and other businesses.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1383714. VIAF identifies the subject as 1629644. The Library of Congress control number is n90633970. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1815, 1873, 1857 and 1861.
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This entry incorporates text from “Horace F. Clark” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.