MEMORIAL OF FRANK NELSON CLARK

IN THE nineteenth day of December, 1910, there passed from this life one of the most prominent and useful members of this Society. Attending to his usual activities until the very day he was called, the end came with a suddenness that startles and shocks. With no note of warning there was struck from our rolls the name of one who for many years labored earnestly and conscientiously to build up this Society, one who was ever solicitous for its welfare, one who in every way was a credit and honor to its membership. As a lifelong and intimate friend and associate it is to me a sacred privilege to be permitted to pay tribute to his memory.

Frank Nelson Clark was born in Clarkston, Mich., a village that perpetuates the name of his immediate ancestry and relatives, who were its earliest pioneers and its founders. Surrounded by lakes and nestling in the very heart of a noted lake region, it was most fitting that this beautiful village should be the birthplace of fish culture in Michigan. Moreover the pioneer fish-cultural enterprise was among the earliest of its kind on the American continent.

The first man to propagate fish on a practical basis in this country was Seth Green, of New York. This was in the early sixties. He was soon followed by Samuel Wilmot, of Ontario, and Nelson W. Clark, of Michigan, father of Frank N., who was identified with his father's fishcultural efforts almost from their earliest inception in the winter of 1866-67. Necessarily this pioneer work was carried on as a private business, for fish culture as a public enterprise was also in its infancy. A board of fish commissioners had been established in three or four of the eastern states, but there were no state or public hatcheries; and the federal government did not take up this work until 1871.

The Clarks, father and son, met with discouragement at first, but their work soon developed into a distinct fish-cultural success. They were, however, confronted with the more difficult problem of making a pecuniary success of a business that was years in advance of the time. Nevertheless they struggled on and on with unflagging interest and unfaltering faith in the future of fish culture. Father and son alike were born fighters, with splendid physical equipment and mental resourcefulness. Both were throbbing and pulsating dynamos of human energy, and so they swept opposition aside and beat down and conquered adversity.

In 1874 they moved to Northville, Mich., where, at that time, better facilities for propagating brook trout were available. Two years later the father died, but the son continued the business as a private enterprise until 1880. From the modest and inexpensive plant of that day has grown the splendid establishment now at Northville, due almost wholly to the genius, persistence, grit and unconquerable energy of Frank N. Clark.

From 1874 on into the early eighties he was employed by the United States Fish Commission at certain seasons of the year in hatching shad and other marine species of the Atlantic coast, and the distribution of these fish took him to many parts of the country and as far west as the Pacific coast. There were no fine hatcheries in those pioneer days, no distributing cars with an ample crew and special equipment and comfortable eating and sleeping quarters. Trips to the Pacific States with live fish meant almost continuous hard work in a baggage car for eight or ten days. Field and hatching stations more often than otherwise were in tents or temporary shacks or fishermen's shanties. There were no easy places in those times, but rather only those privations and days of arduous toil that seem always to be associated with pioneer efforts. And thus it was that Frank N. Clark acquired much of his early.

education in fish culture in the hard school of practical experience..

And yet, with all of its seeming drawbacks and hardships, the work for him had a peculiar fascination, for the greater the difficulties encountered the more he persevered and the heavier he drew on that tremendous reserve force of energy which was his in the fullness of his early manhood.

It was undoubtedly the reputation earned by the Clarks, father and son, as pioneer fish culturists, that led to the son being called into the service of the federal fish commission in 1874. Here his successful work, his zeal and energy, and his enthusiasm and optimism and abiding faith in the future of fish culture, soon attracted the attention of Prof. Spencer F. Baird, the first United States Commissioner of Fisheries. As time went on that truly great and good man and Mr. Clark were drawn into much closer relations. Thus his true worth as a practical fish culturist was recognized by one of the greatest scientists of the time; and when, in 1880, funds were available for propagation service on the great lakes on a scale of some magnitude, he was appointed its first superintendent. He was not only the logical man for the place, but unquestionably the best equipped, both in experience and mental and physical endowment. With boundless energy and ambition he at once inaugurated and prosecuted a campaign that was fought with vigor and signal skill and ability until the very day of his untimely taking off. As he grew and developed and expanded, so did the work which he loved so well, a work that is conceded to be one of the conspicious fish-cultural successes of his time. As he broadened and deepened and ripened, he became, in my judgment, easily the ablest and most successful superintendent in the employ of the Bureau of Fisheries and unquestionably the most forceful.

As a prophet is not without honor save in his own country, so it is, I believe, that Frank N. Clark's standing in the sphere of his special activities was not known or fully ap

preciated in his own community, for he was a national figure in fish-cultural circles and his reputation was nation-wide in this field of endeavor.

What are some of the reasons for the splendid achievements that were his in the chosen field of his life work? First, we find that his heart was in his work and that there was a fighting determination to succeed, two prime essentials for success in any field of human activity. These were backed up and fortified by an inexhaustible fund of energy. Then, we find a genius for organization, the faculty of properly assigning his subordinates and, like a skilful general, so deploying his forces as to secure the highest degree of efficiency from the material at his command; and finally, with his own enthusiasm and fearlessness to so inspire confidence in his leadership as to spur his men on to their best efforts. We might sum this up by saying that he was a born leader, a born commander, one of that type of strong and forceful men who forge to the front always in every field of effort that attracts and challenges and draws out their best energies.

During the last twenty years or more he was prominently identified with this Society, the leading and most influential organization of its kind in existence. Here again that natural leadership which was an inseparable constituent of his being, soon asserted itself. He was one of its standbys and mainstays and stalwarts, one of the loyal old guard whose advice and counsel practically determined its policies and shaped its destinies. He served as its president for the constitutional limit of one term.

He contributed a number of papers and always participated freely in the discussions. He was ever eager to learn and to draw out the newest and latest and best in his line of work, but he was equally generous in imparting information from his own storehouse of knowledge. Much might be said of his connection with this Society and of his fidelity and faithful devotion to its best interests, but we will pass