INTRODUCTION.

THE materials used in the following pages have been mainly derived from probate courts, parochial registers, official documents, and public libraries ; few memorials of their more remote forefathers are to be found in the possession of the Clarksons at the present day.

The conflagration which occurred in New York city, in the autumn of 1776, during its occupation by the British, destroyed the family residence in Whitehall street, and, as it is believed, all its contents, including the papers, books, and portraits. Almost every memento of the family lineage perished at this time. The house was unoccupied, Mr. Clarkson being absent, temporarily, in New Jersey. The fire began in the evening, in the immediate vicinity of the building, and before morning the whole district was a sad scene of desolation.

The loss, by this accident, of the family archives, has surrounded with unusual difficulties every attempt to satisfy, from public records, those of their descendants who, to use the words of a quaint author, are "curiously listening after the memory of their ancestors."

The birthplace of the Clarksons, Bradford in Yorkshire, has few early registers and no parish books of a date antecedent to 1596, and most of the "ancient writings" of the town, whence much information might have been obtained, were lost when it was captured by the royalist forces during the civil wars. This loss was greatly deplored by the old chronicler, Thoresby.

It has been ascertained, however, from the Prerogative Court, at York, and from other sources, that the family was long established at Bradford. The name of Robert occurs in the subsidy roll for the year 1544, in the reign of Henry the Eighth, and William, some years later, was a Warden of the Parish Church.

A tradition is also extant which points to a common descent of this family and of one of the same name of Kirton and Willoughby, in the neighboring county of Nottingham. Upon the authority of Mr.