Person

Beverly Leonidas Clarke (Simpson County, Kentucky, attorney and politician)

b. 1809-02-11 d. 1860-03-17

Simpson County, Kentucky, attorney and politician. Chesterfield County, Virginia, native. Son of William Clarke and Pauline Hopkins Clarke. Married to Mariah Louisa Clarke in 1827. Father of Pauline Clarke Mosby, Bettie E. Clarke, Delia Clarke, and George W. Clarke. Married to Zenobia A. Turner Clarke in Davidson County, Tennessee, on April 27, 1851. Father of Thomas H. Clarke. Graduate of Lexington Law School in Fayette County, Kentucky, in 1831. Admitted to the bar in 1833. Resident of Simpson County in 1840. Owned four enslaved persons in Simpson County in 1840. Member of the House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Kentucky from Simpson County from 1841 to 1843. Member of the United States House of Representatives from the Second Congressional District of Kentucky as a Democrat from 1847 to 1849. Delegate to the Kentucky Constitutional Convention in Frankfort in 1849. Attorney in Simpson County in 1850. Owned four enslaved persons in Simpson County in 1850. Unsuccessful Democratic candidate for Governor of Kentucky in 1855. U.S. Minister Resident to Guatemala and Honduras from 1858 to 1860.

Details

Sex
Male
Race
White

Bibliography

Sixth Manuscript Census of the United States (1840), Population Schedules, Kentucky, Simpson County, p. 206.

Seventh Manuscript Census of the United States (1850), Population Schedules, Kentucky, Simpson County, p. 10B.

Seventh Manuscript Census of the United States (1850), Slave Schedules, Kentucky, Simpson County, p. 847.

Tennessee State Marriages, 1780-2002, Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville, TN, Davidson County, 1838 - 1864: Marriages 3, p. 57.

Lewis Collins and Richard H. Collins, Collins' Historical Sketches of Kentucky, vol. 2 (Covington, KY: Collins & Co., 1874), 721.

The Biographical Encyclopædia of Kentucky of the Dead and Living Men of the Nineteenth Century, vol. 1 (Cincinnati: J. M. Armstrong & Company, 1878), 120.

"Clarke, Beverly Leonidas," The Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, vol. 2, eds. Rossiter Johnson and John Howard Brown (Boston: The Biographical Society, 1904), 130.

Citation

Clarke, Beverly Leonidas. Accessed via the Civil War Governors of Kentucky Digital Documentary Edition, https://discovery.civilwargovernors.org/document/S32212682 (November 12, 2026).

The people, organizations, and places listed below appear in the same documents as Beverly Leonidas Clarke (Simpson County, Kentucky, attorney and politician). They are sorted by the number of documents they share.

Documents (1)

People

Organizations

Places

Loading network...

Network Visualized

How to use the visualization

CWGK’s network visualization brings the edition’s documents to life. The network on this page centers around Clarke, Beverly Leonidas. Click on the light blue dot to see the documents in which the entity appears. You can also click on the dark orange dots to see other people linked to Clarke, Beverly Leonidas, a light orange dot to see the places connected to Clarke, Beverly Leonidas, or dark green dots to see organizations linked to Clarke, Beverly Leonidas.

Additionally, the lines between the dots add additional information. The light green lines demonstrate direct connections between Clarke, Beverly Leonidas and another person, place, or organization. The light pink lines highlight that the dots appear in the same document.