Elhanan Winchester Clark was born Dec 22, 1822 in Atkinson, Penobscot County, Maine, the son of Samuel Clessen Clark and Sally Dow. He was reared and educated in that area and was an overseer in the Lancaster Gingham Factory in Massachusetts for three years.

On the 15th of March, 1846, Elhanan married Susan Caroline Tidd in Monroe, ME. The couple and three of their children, (three more died in infancy) moved south to ease Elhanan's ill health condition for one year and finally, in 1857, moved to Iowa and settled in Riverdale where he prempted 143 1/2 acres of land. He built a comfortable cottage 24 by 33 feet in size, built largely from timber of his own planting, one tree yielding 250 feet of lumber in fourteen years of growth. Mr. Clark purchased eighty acres more of land and Mrs. Clark came into possession of a 135 acre homestead, through her parents, making them quite a large farm. 230 acres under improvement, the remainder in grass and timberland.

Father Clark, if not the oldest settler, was perhaps the most widely known and the most familiar figure of the old pioneers of the country. If his face and form were not frequently seen, those of his children of grandchildren were in nearly every gathering, reminding one of the venerable father or grandfather, and it was a joy to meet the white haired, pleasant faced old gentleman, whose form. although slightly stooped with old age, still towered above the average man like an old oak in a forest.

His life did not follow the road of the ambitious, and fame and political distinction was not his aim, yet his life was a busy, well spent one. The heritage that he leaves is a family reared in the fear of God, who have listened to his precepts and followed in his footsteps, and whose every day lives are a credit to their parents and an example to their neighbors. His life's work was fully done, he had lived beyond his allotted three score and ten years, and it was not unfitting that it should close like the setting sun at the end of a peaceful summer day, and with a full knowledge that whatever is laid up beyond for a well spent life, would be granted him.

Elhanan Winchester Clark died April 10, 1900 at the age of 77 and is buried in Union Cemetery, Livermore, Iowa