Mary A. E. Bash

  General Notes:

Teenage Mary fell in love with a neighbor boy, Albert G. Clark. Her father refused to consent to them marrying, believing his only daughter was too young. So the young couple eloped to Missouri where parental consent was not necessary. Angered and disappointed that his darling daughter had disobeyed him, Mary's father refused to have anything more to do with her. Then, in timeless tradition, when his grandchildren started arriving, he relented and the family reunited.
But unlike the fairy tales, everyone did not live happily ever after. Our lovely heroine was felled by circumstances beyond her control. Her unfaithful husband contracted syphilis, which he unknowingly passed to his wife. The disease attacked her brain, causing severe headaches and aberrant behavior.
On the night of November 1, 1869, tragedy struck the Clark farmhouse---a 20-foot-square log structure, with a frame addition on the north end. The next morning, owner/farmer John Gulde arrived to harvest the cornfield. He sent his young daughter Mary Elizabeth to the house to leave his dinner. Going into the house, she discovered the three young children lying dead on the bed, and a "river of blood" running from the bed to the door. The heads of the two boys had been split open with an axe. The baby's head had been smashed to a jelly. The axe that had done the horrible work was standing against the bed, covered with hair and blood. About two rods from the front door, the family dog, a young pup, was found dead, undoubtedly killed with the same weapon. Mary Clark was nowhere to be found.
As news of the horror spread, the countryside was up in arms, searching for the missing mother. Some pioneers suspected the native Indians of killing the children and kidnapping the mother. Others suspected an unfriendly neighbor, Jake Blink, of whom Mary was terrified. One neighbor stated that Mrs. Clark "was afraid as death of Jake Blink, and would run from him if she saw him half a mile away." Landowner Blink was determined to regain the Clark farm, which he had lost in a nasty divorce, by any means necessary. Blink had threatened to kill Albert Clark when he had an opportunity. But on the night of November 1st, Albert was away with his threshing crew. He returned home about 9 a.m. on Tuesday, November 2, to find his three children slaughtered and his wife gone. He lay groaning "My poor Charlie! My dear Frank! Darling babe! O, where is my poor Mary?"
He determined she was wearing a white Garibaldi (blouse) and a blue Merino wool skirt, as he found all her other clothes. Her description was given as about five feet three inches in height, heavy built, complexion swarthy, eyes dark and sparkling, hair dark and very long. The citizens of Eden Township, Marshall County, Iowa, offered a $500 reward. 350 citizens lined up about five rods apart and searched the area. Neighbor Blink opposed their going over his field, saying it would "break down the corn, trample the field and injure it."
Four days later, Mary Clark suddenly reappeared, and entered her little home to find her father and father-in-law there. She asked for her babies, who had already been buried side by side, in one short, broad coffin. Some straw was stuck in Mary's hair and clothing, and a search disclosed the place of her concealment, in an old straw stack, not over a hundred yards south of the house. (This catatonic state in which the unmoving victim appears to be dead, led in earlier centuries to people being buried alive by mistake, as in Edgar Allen Poe's "Fall of the House of Usher," as well as his "The Premature Burial.") An inquest judged Mary insane in the matter of the deaths of her children. Mary was allowed to return to her husband, and they begot two more children: Sherman Everett Clark (a deaf mute---could neither hear nor speak) and Albert Leroy Clark, who was called Leroy and Roy. Mary's mental faculties worsened, and by 1885, she had been confined to the mental ward of the county farm. She died there at age 52. Her youngest child, Leroy Clark, a veteran of the U.S. Army, died at age 45 at his home in Marshalltown, a victim of the Spanish influenza pandemic that was sweeping the world. He was buried near his mother.

Mary married Albert G. Clark. (Albert G. Clark was born about 1850, died on 8 May 1913 in Marshall County, Iowa and was buried in Riverside Cemetery, Marshalltown, IA.)