author
John A. (John Alonzo) Clark
1801–1843
A 19th-century Episcopal minister and writer, he turned travel, pastoral experience, and devotional storytelling into books that reached a wide religious readership. His work ranges from memoirs and practical Christian writing to a travel narrative remembered for its early account of Mormonism.
1 Audiobook
Gleanings by the Way
by John A. (John Alonzo) Clark
About the author
Born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in 1801, John Alonzo Clark became an Episcopal clergyman as well as a prolific religious author. Sources available here identify him as a graduate of Union College who studied at the General Theological Seminary in New York, and they connect him with early ministry work in Palmyra, New York.
Clark wrote across several closely related genres: memoir, devotional instruction, pastoral counsel, and travel writing. Among the works linked to him in the sources found here are The Young Disciple, The Pastor's Testimony, A Walk About Zion, and Gleanings by the Way. That last book is especially notable because it includes an early printed discussion of Mormonism alongside his broader travel observations.
He died in 1843. While not a household name today, he represents a kind of 19th-century author once deeply woven into American religious reading: a minister whose books were meant to guide, encourage, and document the spiritual life of his time.