John Clark

John Clark (1809-1880) worshiped in Baptist churches in Thrapston, Devonshire Square in London, and at the Old Bunyan Meeting in Bedford before accepting an appointment as a BMS missionary to Jamaica in 1835, assisting John Coultart at St. Ann. His fiance, a Miss Spiller, arrived in early July 1836, and they were married on 12 July, the same day Coultart and Nichols (at Torquay) died. Clark helped open a chapel at Brown’s Town in 1836, which was enlarged in 1838. In the next four years he opened chapels in Sturge Town, Bethany, Clarksonville, and Salem. Besides church planting, Clark also started a number of schools in Jamaica and founded ten villages. Along with fellow missionaries Walter Dendy and James Phillippo, Clark published The Voice of Jubilee:  A Narrative of the Baptist Mission, Jamaica, from its Commencement; with Biographical Notices of its Fathers and Founders (London: J. Snow, 1865). See John Clarke, Memorials of the Baptist Missionaries in Jamaica (London: Yates and Alexander, 1869), 170-171.