George Clarke (1768-1835)

George Clarke was born in Dijon, France, while his parents were living abroad. Clarke inherited part of his family’s American property at the age of nine and as he was a minor, it was not sequestered during the Revolution. When he came of age, he went to New York for the first time, landing on April 20, 1789. The war had left general confusion about his status as a landowner and much of the rent in arrears. He determined that his property held great promise for future development and filed a petition for naturalization as the law at the time required all landowners to be American citizens. He was called back to England for business reasons and left in May 1790. He planned to return in the summer of 1791, and the New York legislature passed a bill that allowed him “to hold, purchase and sell lands” as if he were a citizen. His younger brother Edward also agreed to sell his share of the American property to him.

George did not return in 1791. Instead, he married Elizabeth Rochfort (1772-1861), purchased Great Chesterton Lodge, a house adjoining the village of Chesterton, Oxfordshire, and had six children.

In 1806 his main agent in New York died, and Clarke went to New York to resolve challenges to his absentee landownership and to reorganize the management of his property. He became actively involved in developing his land and remained in New York. In 1811 he sent for his two eldest sons, George and Edward, who joined him for further schooling. In 1813 his current agent, Richard Fenimore Cooper, died and the following summer he married his widow, Ann Low Cary Cooper (1783-1850). In preparation for his marriage, Clarke rented a townhouse in Albany, and furnished it by patronizing local businesses. Much of his furniture was ordered from the cabinetmaking firm of John Meads, while most of his silverware was supplied by Robert Shepherd and William Boyd.

In 1817, George and Ann signed papers of separation. The following month, he bought 332 acres including a headland at the northern end of Otsego Lake in the town of Springfield. Construction began on a cottage designed by architect Philip Hooker, but within months Clarke expanded the house to the scale of a large country house that he named Hyde Hall after the family seat in Cheshire. He wrote to his English family for several years in the hope that they would join him in New York. However, his English wife Elizabeth had become mentally unstable and addicted to laudanum. When she and her children finally decided not to move to New York, George and Ann reconciled. Their son George Clarke, Jr., was born in 1822.

When his father died in London in 1824, Clarke inherited Swainswick and various other properties. There were both debts from his father’s general mismanagement of Swainswick and expenses due to the lack of maintenance at the English Hyde Hall estate, which his father had been renting from George. Control of the English properties was turned over to his son, Edward.

When his father died in London in 1824, Clarke inherited Swainswick and the entailed sugar plantation in Jamaica, and nothing else. There were both debts from his father’s general mismanagement of Swainswick and expenses due to the lack of maintenance at the English Hyde Hall estate, which his father had been renting from George. Control of the English and Jamaican properties was turned over to his son, Edward. It would appear that little if any funding for Hyde Hall’s construction derived from the Jamaican plantations, which at that point were practically worthless.

Clarke continued his management in New York, dealing with his rental properties in the Hudson and Mohawk Valleys, investing in transportation developments in canals, railroads and toll roads and keeping track of an iron and glass manufactory in Taberg, New York. At Hyde Hall he oversaw four building campaigns to complete the house as well as laying out a landscape park and building roads, bridges, and various outbuildings until his death in 1835.