Abraham Clark, an American patriot, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, born at Elizabethtown, N. J., Feb. 15, 1726, died at Railway, Sept, 15, 1794. Having received an excellent education, particularly in mathematics and civil law, he chose the occupations of surveying and conveyancing. He held several important local oflices under the colonial government, but upon the first appearance of resistance to the aggressions of the mother country, he took an active part in sustaining the rights of the colonists. He was a member of the committee of public safety in Elizabethtown, and on June 21, 1776, was appointed by the provincial congress one of the five delegates from New Jersey to the continental congress. In November of the same year he was reelected and served as a member of the continental congress, with the exception of the session of 1779, until November, 1783. In 1788 he again took his seat in the national legislature. He was one of the commissioners in the convention which met at Annapolis, Sept, 11, 1786, for the purpose of reporting a uniform system of commercial intercourse and regulations, for ratification by the several states; and on May 8 in the following year he was appointed one of the commissioners to represent New Jersey in the convention which framed the federal constitution.

Ill health prevented his attendance at the sessions of that assembly, but in 1790 he was elected a member of the second congress, and retained his seat until a short time before his death. A monument to his memory was erected in the cemetery at Rahway, July 4, 1848.

(LARK, Alvaii, an American artist and optician, born in Ashfield, Mass., March 8, 1804. A farmer's boy, his self-taught skill gained for him at the age of 22 the situation of a calico engraver at Lowell. After nine years employment in this business at various places, he became a successful portrait painter in Boston. When over 40 years of age he became interested in telescopes, and, assisted by his sons, has been very successful in producing instruments of great accuracy. No. 9 of vol. xvii. of the "Proceedings of the Royal Astronomical Society" of London contains a list of discoveries made by him with telescopes of his own manufacture. He is also the inventor of a double eyepiece, an ingenious and valuable method of measuring small celestial arcs, from 3' to 60'. In 1863 the French academy of sciences awarded to him the Lalande prize for discovering a new star near Sirius, by means of his own great reflecting telescope.