Discussion: Eli Clark was born in Westhampton, Massachusetts on September 22, 1790. He married his cousin Asenath (1795-1863) and together they moved to Sodus about 1818, at the same time as neighbor and fellow Underground Railroad activist Seth Coleman. Noted as “a man of puritanic habits and thought,” Eli Clark became an active abolitionist and Underground Railroad supporter. 

As an abolitionist, Clark was chosen vice-president of the organizational meeting of the Wayne County Anti-Slavery Society, held at the Presbyterian Church in Palmyra on December 1, 1837. 

In 1843, Eli Clark was one of the 6 outspoken abolitionist members of the Liberty Party that was "read out" of the Sodus Presbyterian Church.

In 1898, neighbor L.C. Coleman cited Eli Clark as an Underground Railroad “station master,” in his description of local Underground Railroad routes and houses. “It happened that one Sunday morning Mr. Clark brought a colored family to my father’s house [Seth Coleman’s house] that Mr. Cuyler had brought there the night before. Cooper took them to Cuyler’s. That Sunday my father took them to Sodus Point, putting them on a schooner for Canada.”  In other words, this family had gone from Griffith Cooper’s house in Williamson north along what is now Route 21 to the Cuyler home in Pultneyville and then east to Eli Clark and then to Seth Coleman, who took them to Sodus Point where they left for Canada.

Eli and Asenath Clark’s son Lewis H. Clark became a teacher and superintendent of the Sodus Academy. He also became an author, writing History of Churches in the Town of Sodus and Military History of Wayne County, New York.”  Eli Clark died October 7, 1871, age 86.  Services were held in the Presbyterian Church. He was buried with Asenath in Sodus Rural Cemetery. [