Clark, Francis Edward

Clark, Francis Edward (1851-  ), American clergyman, was born of New England ancestry at Aylmer, Province of Quebec, Canada, on the 12th of September 1851. He was the son of Charles C. Symmes, but took the name of an uncle, the Rev. E.W. Clark, by whom he was adopted after his father’s death in 1853. He graduated at Dartmouth College in 1873 and at Andover Theological Seminary in 1876, was ordained in the Congregational ministry, and was pastor of the Williston Congregational church at Portland, Maine, from 1876 to 1883, and of the Phillips Congregational church, South Boston, Mass., from 1883 to 1887. On the 2nd of February 1881 he founded at Portland the Young People’s Society of Christian Endeavor, which, beginning as a small society in a single New England church, developed into a great interdenominational organization, which in 1908 had 70,761 societies and more than 3,500,000 members scattered throughout the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, South Africa, India, Japan and China. After 1887 he devoted his time entirely to the extension of this work, and was president of the United Societies of Christian Endeavor and of the World’s Christian Endeavor Union, and editor of the Christian Endeavor World (originally The Golden Rule). Among his numerous publications are The Children and the Church (1882); Looking Out on Life (1883); Young People’s Prayer Meetings (1884); Some Christian Endeavor Saints (1889); World-Wide Endeavor (1895); A New Way Round an Old World (1900).