Caldwell County MO Archives History .....M.C. MARTIN AN EARLY HAMILTON CARPENTER 
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Karen Walker khw4@yahoo.com September 8, 2008, 4:09 pm

M.C. MARTIN AN EARLY HAMILTON CARPENTER
	Narrator:  Lilla Martin, 73, Hamilton

     Miss Martin gave this interview before she went west 1934 to visit her 
friends, the Moffits, where she died.  She speaks of her father M.C. Martin, 
commonly known as Clark Martin.
     He was born 1830 in Marion county Ills. and died at his home in Hamilton 
1905 aged 75.  When a small boy he moved to Iowa where he learned the 
carpenters trade.  He was building a house when the news came that the Civil 
War had started.  He hired other carpenters to finish his job and joined the 
Union army.  After the war, he moved his family to Hamilton Mo.  His Iowa 
friends warned him that he would be killed down there by the rebels but he 
found the Missouri Southerners fine people.
     He came here Sept 1866 with his trade of carpentering to help build the 
new town.  His brother Sam Martin was also a carpenter, and they were known as 
the Martin brothers.  In later years, he devoted more of his time to small 
piece work like cabinet making and ran a novelty works over in the west part 
of town near the railroad.  This burned down one night.
     He married 1853 Helen P. Kinne of New York, and there were 4 children.  
Eugene (whose personal write up appears in this series), D.P. (often called 
Pitt) of Kansas, Lilla who was an early business women in town, compositor on 
the early Hamiltonian, clerk in the P.O. and later ran a P.O. bookstore in the 
lobby when the P.O. stood directly north of the railroad; Lauren the fourth 
child lived in California.  
     Lilla Martin had a taste for acting, and often appeared in the home 
dramatic shows, playing the Octoroon in the play of that name.  She was one of 
the early students of the guitar in town.  The Martins were strong Methodists, 
charter members when the M.E. Church was organized here 1867.  Lilla as a girl 
always sang in the choir and she rather believed that her mother had sung alto 
in the choir here.
     The Clark Martin family for many years lived on a small place at the west 
end of the street, now called McGaughey, but at the time they went on it, it 
was considered out in the country.  It is the present home of Joseph Smith.  
They got this place on a trade with Elder Carey Hill in the late 60s.  The 
Hills took in exchange a farm in the south part of the country.  After Mr. 
Martin's death, the Martin family sold this suburban home to James Kautz and 
moved to what is now the Lit Gregory home near the south school.  Mr. and Mrs. 
Martin are buried in Highland cemetery, and Lilla is buried out west in the 
Moffit lot, at whose home she died.
     Interview  1934.


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