Sarah Maria Heath

of Ledyard and Brooklyn, Connecticut

           Sarah Maria Heath was born on June 30, 1822 in Ledyard, Connecticut. She was the fourth of thirteen children born to Amos and Mary (Chapman) Heath of Groton, Connecticut. On March 4, 1841, at the age of eighteen, Sarah married Francis Brigham Clark, a tanner and currier who had emigrated to America from England five years earlier. Their marriage certificate, which I have, reads:

This certifies that Mr. Francis Clark of Brooklyn and
Miss Sarah M. Heath of Ledyard, were duly
joined together in marriage at Ledyard,
March 4th, Anno Domini 1841,
By me, Henry W. Avery, Justice of the Peace.

This is a scan of the original marriage certificate:

          Sarah and Francis eventually settled in Brooklyn, Windham County Connecticut, where Francis purchased a tannery and carried on this line of work until his death on November 22, 1875. In the thirty-four years of their marriage, Sarah and Francis had the following children:

          All but two of Sarah and Francis' children survived to adulthood. The eldest two boys, Francis and William, served in the Civil War.

         A biography of her son, Levi Nelson Clark, provides the following information on Sarah Heath Clark's ancestry:

         "It is not unlikely that the Heaths of Groton or vicinity, from whom Sarah M. (Heath) Clark, the mother of Levi N. Clark, of Canterbury, descends, are from a Haverhill family. At least in support of this is the fact that John Heath is early of record at Norwich, Conn., and from Haverhill. His wife Hannah was received into the church at Norwich, and a son, Josiah, was baptized in 1715. Bartholomew Heath, born in 1600, and early at Newbury, Mass., had John, Joseph and Josiah. Of these John, born Aug. 15, 1643, married Nov. 4, 1666, Sarah, daughter of William Partridge, of Salisbury, and removed to Haverhill. Josiah married Mary, daughter of John Davis, of Haverhill, and had a son, Josiah. In the absence of family records and direct knowledge on the subject the similarity of family names is in further support of the theory of connection between the Newbury, Haverhill, and Norwich families.
         William Heath, grandfather of Mrs. Clark, was a drummer in the Revolution and was killed in battle. He married a Miss Culver, and among their children was a son named Amos.
         Amos Heath, father of Mrs. Clark, became a soldier in the war of 1812, serving in the summer of 1813 in the company commanded by Stephen Billings."

         While much of the information in this biography is probably accurate, it is known than William Heath was neither a drummer nor did he die in the Revolutionary War; although he was a private in the Revolution.    The ancestry of Sarah's line of Heaths is, as yet, unknown.

         Sarah died in Brooklyn on February 3, 1905 at the age of eighty-two. She is buried near Francis and her sons George, John, Benjamin and Benjamin's family at South Cemetery on Canterbury Road in Brooklyn, CT.

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