Joanna Payn, of Fort Miller, and purchased a farm, he made his permanent residence. The rise of Dr. Clark had been phenomenal; from a bartender to the dignity of a profession, and all in the space of four or five years! Dr. Clark was but twenty-one when he came to Moreau. Having previously satisfied the preliminary requirements, he was advanced to the full privileges of a physician in a license granted by the judge of the court of common pleas for Washington County, in the month of June following his settlement in Saratoga County. From his home in Moreau, Dr. Clark for thirty-four years went up and down the long stretches of his rides, ministering faithfully to the sick. The region was in a primitive condition, with poor roads, and was but thinly inhabited. Exhausting to body and mind, as must necessarily have been his labors, he yet had a disposition to employ himself in the sphere of agriculture and to inform himself upon the political issues of the day. In 1820 he represented his county as Member of Assembly. Through his daily visits to the sick, Dr. Clark was afforded exceptional advantages for observing and studying the effects upon the people of the prevailing intemperance, which had taken a particularly strong grasp upon the population among which he had come to dwell. Armstrong seems to attribute the heavy drinking in Moreau to the leading industry, stating that "all the towns and counties in the vicinity of the ever-rolling Hudson were teeming with lumber." Whatever may have been the predisposing cause of the general and excessive use of intoxicants in England, it is not difficult to point out the conditions which contributed to the growth of the same practice in this country. The lives of the people were laborious, monotonous, and unmitigated by those social relaxations which in modern times so greatly lighten the burdens and alleviate the sorrows of life. Books and periodicals were not plentiful, and the character of the prevailing literature was not such as to invite the attention of the average reader. Transportation being by horsepower along the country roads, public houses, each with its bar, were encountered at every turn, while the little stores to be found at the cross-roads, also dispensed liquor to all comers. Add to this the fact that the materials from which intoxicating beverages are manufactured were abundantly grown within our borders, and near to our shores, and it will be appreciated how naturally the people fell into intemperate habits. For a period of nine years, while Dr. Clark, in all extremities of weather, rode on horseback to the bedsides of his widely separated patients, the burden of the drink-evil weighed heavily upon his mind. He was a man of energy; one who was not easily thwarted in the carrying out of his plans. But here was a task that seemed too hard for him. What could one man accomplish in the presence of such indifference and overwhelming opposition?