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In the September/October, 2007 issue of "American Spirit" magazine, which is put out by the D.A.R., there is an article about this man. The article is about a mansion he built on Otsego Lake in New York. It is called Hyde Hall and was originally on 400 acres near what is now Cooperstown. There are several pictures of the interior and exterior of the home.
"George Clarke was a wealthy British emigrant Clarke probably felt royal because he was. His great-grandmother, Anne Hyde, was a cousin of Queen Mary II and Queen Anne of England, and his great grandfather, also named George Clarke, was royal governor of the New York Colony from 1736 to 1743 - an appointment that allowed the elder Clarke to amass 120,000 acres."
"Clarke, who inherited his grandfather's fortune, along with other British properties, could have lived anywhere, from a sugar plantation in Jamaica to a medieval estate in the English countryside."
"He came to New York as a 21-year-old to survey his properties in the Hudson and Mohawk valleys, and during his visit, sought Amer4ican citizenship to protect his inheritance from being sequestered. He soon went back to England, but returned to the United States in 1806 after his marriage failed."
He later (ca. 1813) married Ann Cooper, the widow of his land agent, Richard Cooper, whose family settled Cooperstown. His brother was the author James Fenimore Cooper. The main house was built in 1828, but he had started building on the property in 1817, and more than 30 building were constructed.
Clarke died at his home in 1835, leaving some of the home unfinished. "His properties in England and the West Indies were divided among sons from his first marriage, while his one son with Ann, George Clark, only 13 at the time, inherited Hyde Hall and its properties, along with the rest of his father's vast acreage...He didn't take carge of the estate until he turned 21, but he soon added to his properties....Much of his property was devoted to growing hops and he eventually became one of the top producers in the country. By 1887 dwindling land values and shifts in the beer industry led to his bankruptcy."
"Hyde Hall was almost lost forever until George's son, George "Hyde" Clarke, who abandoned his law career to help his father run the estate, saved it with the help of his wife Mary Gale Carter Clarke, who used her inheritance from her prominent Cooperstwon family to repurchase it, along with 3,000 acres of former Clarke farms."
"In 1908, Mary Clarke, a DAR member and close friend of American Girl Scouts founder and frequent Hyde Hall visitor Juliette Gordon Lowe, started a boys' school there to educate her two youngest sons and earn extra income. After her husband's death in 1914, she helped her eldest son, also named George Hyde Clarke, manage the estate and later sold it to him."
"George, who left a railroading career to run the house after his father's death, had seven children with his first wife, but they all left Hyde Hall when the couple divorced. His second marriage produced a son, Thomas Clarke, who became Hyde Hall's final heir."
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