Early Life

Samuel Adams Clark Jr. was born in New York City in 1910, the elder of two sons of the architect Samuel Adams Clark and Gertrude Jerome Alexandre. He grew up in a household connected to both New York’s architectural elite and its Gilded Age social world, and was educated in the private schools typical of that circle.

Marriage and Wartime Service

In 1936 Clark married Elizabeth Lanier Fenno (1916–1969), daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John Brooks Fenno of New York and Lenox, Massachusetts. Their wedding took place in the gardens of Three Acres, the Lenox estate of Elizabeth’s mother, a frequent setting for social events reported in the New York Times. The marriage lasted four years; the couple divorced in 1940.

During the Second World War, Clark served in the United States Army from 1942 to 1945. Details of his service are sparse, but military records confirm his enlistment and honorable discharge near the war’s end.

Later Career and Life

Following the war, Clark entered civilian employment as an accounts manager with IBM, a position he held for many years. His postwar life was largely private and unpublicized, in marked contrast to the prominence of his parents and his first wife. In later life he relocated to Merced, California, where he retired.

Later Marriages and Death

After his first marriage ended, Clark married Caroline Agnes Franklyn (1924–1981), and later Marie Dunlap Meredith (1917–2000). He lived quietly in California until his death in 1998.\

Note

Although Samuel Adams Clark Jr.’s life attracted little public attention, his first wife, Elizabeth Lanier Fenno, later the subject of various society-page stories and legal notices, ensured that his name appeared periodically in the newspapers of his time.