Building Capital: The Public and Private Life of Joseph Clark, architect

by Anne M. Tria

As a continuation of my research project on the construction of the State House Dome and Lightning Rod, this summer I am attempting to produce an in depth study of its architect, Joseph Clark. During the past school year I uncovered many details of Joseph Clark's public career focusing primarily on his business affiliations with Robert Morris. John Nicholson, and James Greenleaf in Washington D.C. Now I hope to place his experience as a contractual architect and builder within the context of Clark's larger public role as ardent federalist, deputy grandmaster of the Freemasons, architect of numerous Maryland public works, and later as an insolvent petitioner in Baltimore attempting to reclaim his due from Luther Martin and the State of Maryland.

While attempting to reconstruct Clark's entrepreneurial endeavors, I often found that his private life played a pivotal role in his professional career and vice versa. As a result, I spent much of the first half of this summer on a genealogical pursuit of Clark, his wife Isabella, and the couple's four known children. The results,in my opinion, reveal not simply a brief glimpse into the world of Joseph Clark but also offer the researcher a broader understanding of the country's early economic practices (speculation) , problems with building a new government (both literally and figuratively), and relationships between men and women during the nation's infancy.

Because I often spend my time between off-site locations in Baltimore and Washington D.C., my project also provided a test for Betsy Bodziak's new HTML note taking system. When I was little I remember telling my Dad that I wouldn't need to learn computer programming because I wanted to be a historian. Much to my delight, this summer the Archives proved me wrong.