Cyrus Sullivan Clark
Cyrus Sullivan Clark (December 8, 1809 – July 28, 1880) was one of the largest players in the lumber industry in Quebec’s Eastern Townships during the 19th century, along with George Benson Hall Jr. and the British American Land Company.
He was born in Minot, Maine, and attended Waterville College, graduating in 1828. He started as a grocer in Portland, Maine, spent several years in Bangor, and moved to Portland in 1854. After the St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad opened in 1853, competition for timber around Lake Aylmer grew, drawing Canadian and American entrepreneurs.
By 1856 Clark was the region’s biggest license holder, controlling about 410 of 825 square miles of timber limits. He also owned roughly 123,000 acres near Lake Temiscouata and the Madawaska River, plus 19 licenses on the Saint-Maurice River and a town lot in Sherbrooke. To counter new export duties on unfinished logs in 1851, he built a massive sawmill at Brompton Falls in 1854—the largest in North America at the time.
In 1855 Clark and his partners transferred their Canadian properties to City Bank and the Bank of Montreal. The Panic of 1857 hit the U.S. timber market, and the banks sold the debt to John Henry Pope. Clark later bought back the properties in 1869, with Pope remaining a key spokesman for the company.
In 1872 the British American Land Company sold about 99,800 acres to Clark, and he bought another 7,900 acres the following year. These holdings were roughly half of his Crown timber limits. During the Long Depression in the 1870s, he lost these lands to mortgage defaults but had repurchased about 42,745 acres from the Eastern Townships Bank by 1879–80. He eventually formed the Brompton Mills Lumber Company in partnership with Pope.
Clark was married to Charlotte Cooley and had a daughter, Charlotte Clark. He died in Portland, Maine, in 1880.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 22:41 (CET).