Missionary Who Died While Serving

"I beheld that the faithful elders of this dispensation, when they depart from mortal life, continue their labors in the preaching of the gospel of repentance and redemption" President Joseph F. Smith (D&C 138:57).

L.D.S. (Mormon) Missionary who died of smallpox while serving.

Son of Ezra Thompson Clark and Susan Leggett.

"John Alexander Clark died in Haifa, Palestine, February 8, 1895. He was teaching school in Minersville, Utah when he was called to a mission to Turkey. He landed at Liverpool in February, met his co-workers in Leipzig, Germany, and in the summer started to work among the German population of Beirut, Syria while starting to study Arabic. In August he went to Haifa where he started to work among the Arabs. He contracted smallpox and was buried in a cemetery at the foot of Mt. Carmel, Palestine." (Ezra Thompson Clark's Ancestors and Descendants, p. 120)

During his stay in 1894, and up to his death in 1895, Elder Clark was cared for to the last by Brother and Sister Hilde and other kind friends. So far as we can learn, he died of smallpox, but more detailed information can be had from elders present in the mission at that time. In the tithing record of the then Haifa branch we find a credit of ten francs to Elder Clark,on January 18, 1895, and still later, Jan. 26, his name appears again, so it will be seen that his illness was not long, as he died in thirteen days after this last date. Those who knew these two young men in Zion, (Elder Clark and Elder Adolf Haag) whose graves are here by the side of the sea, in the tranquil evening shades of Mt. Carmel, where you see their sepulchres [sic] so close together in double testimony of the gospel... (See, J. Wilford Booth, "Four Heroes Far Away," Improvement Era, 12:898-907)

A total of five LDS missionaries who died while serving are buried in the Middle East: Edgar D. Simmons (from Salt Lake City, Utah; died in 1890 of smallpox; buried in Aintab, Turkey); Adolf Haag (born in Stuttgart, Germany; died in 1892 of typhus; buried in Haifa, Palestine, now Israel); John A. Clark (born in Farmington, Utah; died in 1895 of smallpox; buried in Haifa, Palestine, now Israel); Emil J. Huber (from Zurich, Switzerland; died in 1908 of typhoid; buried in Aleppo, Syria); and Joseph W. Booth (from Alpine, Utah; died in 1928 of cardiac arrest; buried in Aleppo, Syria).