Enoch White Clark (November 16, 1802 – August 4, 1856) was the founder of E. W. Clark & Co., a prominent financial firm based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, that helped the U.S. government finance the Mexican–American War. In 1857, Clark was listed as one of Philadelphia's 25 millionaires.
Clark also launched the financial career of Jay Cooke, who helped finance the Union's war effort in the Civil War and establish a true national currency.
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Biography
Clark was born in November 16, 1802, in Easthampton, Massachusetts, a descendant of Captain William Clark (1609–1690), who emigrated from England aboard the ship Mary and John and landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1630, and moved to the town of Easthampton in 1639. Enoch traced his descent from William as follows: John (1651-1704), John (1679-1768), Eliakim (1707-1781), Lt. Asahel (1737-1822), to his father, Bohan (1772-1846), a merchant and miller who married Mary White (1777-?) on February 11, 1802.
Enoch Clark got his start in finance by working as an office boy at S. & M. Allen & Company, a prominent Philadelphia bank. In 1823, he was made a partner of a new branch of the bank in Providence, Rhode Island. On February 1, 1826, Clark married Sarah Crawford Dodge (1806-1878), a daughter of Nehemiah Dodge. (After she died, her son Edward White Clark commissioned a stained-glass window in her memory in the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia.)
In 1832, Clark launched his own bank in Boston, Massachusetts; it failed four years later, whereupon he headed back to Philadelphia.