| Abstract: |
The Reverend John Alonzo Clark was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in May
1801. His professional career spanned the years of the Second Great Awakening, an evangelical
movement which spread across much of the country, but was most strongly felt in portions of
the Northeast. Aside from his numerous sermons, Clark authored several longer works In 1835,
Clark became a member of the American Tract Society, an organization committed to the
evangelical ideal of saving souls for Christ. This goal was to be accomplished, in part, by
the distribution of religious tracts to every family in the United States within one
generation. The collection spans the period 1828-1842, and consists of twenty-nine small
booklets of sermons, two bound volumes of sermons, a booklet that consists of an index of his
early sermons, and a certificate from the American Tract Society. The sermons were all written
by Clark, and were preached at various locations, including churches in New York, Connecticut,
Rhode Island, Boston, and Philadelphia. Though the collection contains only some of the
hundreds of sermons which Clark wrote and preached during his short career, the information
which he provided about the date and location of his preaching offers a general indication of
his movements over the course of the late 1820s and 1830s.
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