One of Ours | Annie Clark Tanner, A Biography of Ezra Thompson Clark

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This is a slender biography of a Mormon pioneer and patriarch which was written by an adoring daughter in her later years. The inclusion of this volume in the serial publications of the Tanner Trust Fund of the University of Utah Library may be justified on two grounds. The first is the stature of the author, whose own 1941 autobiography, A Mormon Mother (reviewed in Dialogue, Summer, 1971), deserves the wider audience made possible by its 1969 reprinting. The second is the character of E. T. Clark himself. 

E. T. Clark gave unquestioning devotion to the gospel as he understood it—a religion remarkably free of superstition and sentimentality. He served three colonizing missions and five proselyting missions, harbored no profanity, and allowed no work on the Sabbath. Yet he could barter with general authorities about assignments, keep a son home from a mission to manage, the ranch, observe that some very fine people used tobacco, and attribute misfortune to mismanagement or lack of judgement but never to a displeased God. He was a patriarch in the biblical tradition. He maintained two wives in the same town, whom the children never heard disagree, fathered twenty-one children, and provided for them amply. He held the family estates in common until the year of his death. He was generous to the poor, hospitable to the passing stranger, yet shrewd and exacting in his trading and business and made no apology for his accumulation of land and goods. 

E. T.’s daughter wrote his story in the style of the homespun book-of remembrance biography, but with more polish and insight than is usual in such works. The first half of the book is little more than a review of Church history. It reads as though she had gleaned early Church annals for all references to “Clark.” Such references may be smugly gratifying to his descendants, but it is pretentious to consider him important in Church or Utah history. He was not. Indeed, part of the value of this biography lies in the very fact that E. T. did not sit in general Church councils, rise to social prominence, nor achieve economic power. Although in the mainstream of the Mormon colonization effort, his story is free of the usual coloring imposed by the “public face” required of prominent public figures. (One suspects, however, that as in almost all biographies, there is a coloring of his true character—the coloring here appears to be due to the very subjective view of a daughter who sees her father in terms of her own experiences.) 

Annie hit her stride in the second half of the book, where the narrative comes alive with details told with the surety of someone who observed them. It is at this point that E. T.’s personality finally begins to emerge. Even the casual reader should enjoy the last three chapters, which have a high literary quality. We see E. T.’s character reflected in the way he treated his three wives, in the style of his home life, and in his pithy sayings. 

In the book’s capstone, E. T.’s testimony and parting instructions to his family, he speaks of his own “delight in keeping the counsel of His servant in every particular” and made the priorities of his own life very clear: “I would not have my family suppose that I esteem money as I esteem honor, virtue, and above all things fidelity to the Church of Christ; and I trust that no one of my family will ever seek and appreciate the treasures of this world above the treasures that come from an honorable and God-fearing life devoted to religious duties and the obligations which men owe to one another and to their God.” 

Throughout the book Annie is totally laudatory in her description of her father, speaks with great admiration of his business abilities, and highlights the qualities that she herself possessed: independence, lack of fanaticism, and pride in family. If E. T. were in historical fact half the man his daughter portrayed, he was more than man enough for that—or any other—time and place. Hence our disappointment at the aggrandizement of the man and the attempt (however modest) to inflate his place in history. The high standards of honest introspection that Annie brought to bear upon herself when she wrote her autobiography are lacking in the assessment of her father. She suffered dearly for that lack of perception, which almost surely contributed to her own disastrous, polygamous marriage. We suspect that her sub sequent disenchantment with the Church authority to which her father had borne testimony grew in part from the psychological wounds she received because her youthful sentimentality and romanticism left her vulnerable. If our speculation is true, Mormon chroniclers who write under the guise of history would serve themselves, their subjects, and generations to come better if they look at the full dimension of their subject—the human frailties as well as the sense of divine in spiration. Failure to do so may generate more romantic myths and subsequent disillusionment. 

Under the best of circumstances it is difficult to write an even-handed, perceptive, and detailed biography nearly 100 years after the fact when written records are scarce. This biography is but a stone in the mosaic of one Mormon family. Anecdotes passed by word of mouth—because they might have offended some family members or might not have conformed to concepts of what our ancestors “should have been”—are welcome additions which are necessary for whatever insight we may obtain into the personalities of our ancestors. The composite of private stories about E. T. which are known to us paint a somewhat globally less flattering picture of the man, but they detract little from his real achievements while giving some sense of understanding about the successes and failures of his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. If Mormons now lack the perspective or analytical tools to construct the mosaic of their past, they can yet serve history by committing their memories and anecdotes to paper (or tape), with clear citation as to source and context, and with separation of primary data from editorial comment and moralizing. 

As a block in the mosaic of history, the story of E. T. Clark deserves the attention of serious students of Mormon history, sociology, and psychology. The general reader will do better to invest $8.50 in casettes and to get grandfather and grandmother to recount their favorite childhood stories and memories.

A Biography of Ezra Thompson Clark. By Annie Clark Tanner. Introduction by Obert C. Tanner. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Library, 1975. 82pp., $8.50.