Alexander Clark

Short Name: Alexander Clark
Full Name: Clark, Alexander, 1835–1879
Birth Year: 1835
Death Year: 1879

Clark, Alexander, D.D., of Scottish descent, was born in Jefferson County, Ohio, March 10, 1835. He was educated in common schools under the guidance of his father. After teaching in Ohio public schools, he founded and edited Schoolday Visitor, a youth journal reaching more than 30,000 readers, later merged with St. Nicholas Magazine. Originally Presbyterian, he joined the Methodist Protestant Church and was licensed to preach in 1862. From 1866, he served at the First Methodist Protestant Church, Pittsburgh, and later became editor of the Methodist Recorder and associated Sunday School papers. He was chairman of the committee compiling Voice of Praise (1872), contributing five hymns.

Clark received honorary degrees from Mt. Union College, Otterbein University, and Ohio Wesleyan University. During a lecture tour in Georgia, he fell ill and died on July 6, 1879, in Atlanta, Georgia. He was highly regarded for his kind, humane character and devotion to Christian principles, praised by Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll for his fairness even toward nonbelievers.

Hymns in Common Use:

1. Heavenly Father, bless me now – Lent

2. Make room for Jesus – Lent

Publications:

• The Old Log Schoolhouse, 1864

• Working Christianity, or the Gospel in the Trades, 1878

Notes:
His hymn Heavenly Father, bless me now, originally in six four-line stanzas, continued in Methodist Protestant hymnals through 1901. He was noted for kindness, intellectual openness, and practical Christianity, and was an intimate friend of authors like William Cullen Bryant.