George Washington Clark.
George Washington Clarke was a pro-slavery border ruffian who was involved in a number of Bleeding Kansas skirmishes before he was finally driven from the state permanently in 1858.
Clarke was born on April 13, 1841, near Roscoe, Ohio, to Moses Clark and Susan Louisa Coffman. His father died when he was eight years old, and by 1850, he was living with his aunt. When he was 12, he moved to Illinois.
He then made his way to Kansas as a Potawatomi Indian agent. A slaveholder, he was suspected of killing a Free-State man, Thomas W. Barber of Lawrence, during the Wakarusa War of 1855. The following year, while sitting at this desk in his Lecompton home, a shot was fired at him, but it missed. That same year, Clarke led a party of 400 Missourians into Linn County, where they plundered, robbed, and burned the homes of nearly every Free-State family. In 1857, he began to work in the U.S. Land office in Fort Scott, Kansas, where he continued his pro-slavery activities.
He was finally driven out of the state and into southwestern Missouri in August 1858. In 1861, he joined the Army during the Civil War. On February 15, 1863, he became a prisoner of war at Libby Prison, where he spent months malnourished and suffering from scurvy. He was given an honorable discharge in 1865 in Nashville, Tennessee.
Border Ruffians in Kansas by F.O.C. Darley.
After the war, he married Nancy Lucinda Wood in Canton, Missouri, and the couple would eventually have nine children. He spent most of his life as a farmer, first in Adams County, Illinois, and then in 1906, he moved with his family to Shelby, Missouri, where he spent the remainder of his years.
He died on May 28, 1924, of pneumonia in Taylor, Missouri, United States. He is buried in an unmarked grave at Cherry Box Cemetery in Shelby County, Missouri.
Compiled and edited by Kathy Alexander/Legends of Kansas, updated April 2025.
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