06/13/2026
What a fun way to learn history. He started off as a button maker and then went on to build a ship!
Who knew that Carey Cemetery in little old Canterbury is the final resting place of one of the participants in the Boston Tea Party?
Captain John Benjamin Clarke was born on November 17, 1731 in London, England and died in Canterbury on August 21, 1834. John’s step-father, George Collins, who was a button maker by trade, was sent to Vienna, Austria to make buttons for the Royal Court while it was in mourning and while there, John Clarke married an Austrian lady, Maria Theresa Larch, in 1768. John, Theresa, and their two young sons, Thomas and John, immigrated to America just before the beginning of the Revolutionary War and John, who had learned to make buttons from his stepfather, set up shop in Boston. It was said that he made some buttons which Theresa sewed on George Washington's coat.
It is stated in the family genealogy that John was one of the “Indians” at the Boston Tea Party and that the family, which had grown to four children with the births of Elizabeth and Eleanor, had to leave the city when the British occupied Boston. According to the Sons of the American Revolution Membership Applications 1889-1970 Record for Robert Jenks Crampton, during their exodus from Boston in 1775, Mrs. Clarke gave birth to a son under a tree: “Born, at Concord, 3/4 of a mile East of Meeting House on ye road." That son was Captain George Collins Clarke who is buried in Waterville, Maine along with a number of other Clarkes. John, Theresa, and what by then was fifteen children, moved to Waterville (which was named Winslow at the time) circa 1792. While there, in 1800, John and his son, George, built the Ticonic, a 268-ton wooden sailing ship. A big change from making buttons!
How, when, and why Captain Clarke and his wife eventually found their way to Canterbury, is uncertain but it may be because their youngest daughter, Louisa, married into the Frost family, whose plot is directly in front of Captain Clarke’s final resting place. Theresa died on June 19, 1819 in Canterbury at the age of 68 while John lived until the ripe old age of 103. In addition to Louisa, who was the youngest of their 16 children and who died in 1833, their youngest son Francis also died in Canterbury in 1820. Captain Clarke was the last of the Clarkes to die in Canterbury in 1834.
As for Captain Clarke’s stone - both his name and age are wrong. Whoever carved the stone made his first name James rather than John and put his age as 100, not 103. As gravestones were expensive then (and still are) it was probably decided to just leave it as was, especially as John was the last of the Clarkes to die in Canterbury. Regardless of the carving errors, Captain John Clarke is certainly an interesting part of Canterbury’s history.
