Exploring the timeless legacy of the Clifford-Wirick House in Clarksville, Missouri

Historic Clifford-Wirick House, Clarksville, Missouri.Photo byJim Roberts, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Clifford-Wirick House is a historic house constructed around 1878. The historic home is at 105 South Second Street in Clarksville, Missouri (Pike County). Clarksville, as a river town, prospered in the 1840s. It was incorporated in 1847.

Notice the stone and brick foundation of the home. This one-story home was sheathed in clapboard siding. The architectural style is vernacular Italianate. There’s a porch on the south end of the front of the house. The house is also located in the Clarksville Historic District, and it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on July 9, 1984.

The property

The Clifford-Wirick House used to have porches that were enclosed early on to have a kitchen. Inside the house are high ceilings with spacious rooms. 

In 1875, Benjamin Patton “Ben” Clifford purchased his lot, and three years later, he obtained a clear title to the property. That may have been when he built his house.

Ben was born in Kentucky in 1817. He and his family moved to Clarksville in 1833. In 1846, he and his brother, John M. Clifford, opened a store. In about 1856, Ben was one of the builders of the Imperial Mill. This mill sold flour as far as New England. Later, the company was reorganized as Clifford, Roberts & Co.

In 1857, Ben became a cashier and back in the day, this was an important position to hold and usually meant you were the manager. He worked at a bank in Louisiana, Missouri that wasn’t too far north of Clarksville.

From 1862 to 1864, Ben served in the state legislature. In 1868, he organized his bank called B. P. Clifford & Co. Clifford had two marriages and many children (according to Find-a-Grave, he had 14 children). He built houses for some of his children because he could. Ben had a lot of wealth.

Ben Clifford died on December 30, 1880, at age 63. He was married to Lucinda P. Pepper Clifford. Ben and Lucinda had 10 children together. When she died in 1857 at age 42, Ben married Elizabeth A “Lizzie” Alexander Clifford. Ben and Elizabeth had four children.

John A. Wirick

Within a year of Clifford’s death, his property was sold to John A. Wirick. John was a business associate with the Clifford family. 

A native of Pennsylvania, John was born in 1843. He arrived in Clarksville in 1869. He was a manager of the Missouri Vinegar Manufacturing Works. The vinegar factory did well and the building expanded in 1870 and 1872. By 1881, John owned half of the business which was renamed the Missouri Cider and Vinegar Works. 

In 1880, Wirick was one of the incorporators of a paper mill. When it began, it was the only paper mill in the state. In 1885, Wirick purchased the Imperial Mill from Clifford, Roberts & Co., and it produced 250 to 275,000 bushels of wheat a year. In 1894, the paper mill burned down and this was only two years after it had been sold to the Columbia Straw Paper Company.

John died on August 5, 1896. He was only 52. Prior to his death, both he and his wife, Mary S. “Mollie” Smith Wirick, were social in Clarksville. In 1896, Mollie was a founding member of the Fortnightly Reading Club, which was one of the three oldest Federated Clubs in Missouri. After John died, she became a reporter for the Clarksville Banner-Sentinal. 

In 1905, the vinegar factory burned down, and in 1920, the flour mill closed. 

Mollie died on January 27, 1929, at age 78. After she died, the house was sold to an attorney named Frank J. Duvall. On April 18, 1929, Duvall sold the home to Roy and Lena Smith Hunter. In 1933, the Hunters divorced. 

Interestingly, Lena Smith Hunter married Duvall in 1935, and he had also been her attorney. After Duvall died, in 1940, Lena Smith Duvall became Lena Smith Maynard. She sold the house to a local grocer named Jim Cooper and it remained in his family until 1982. Lena died on September 17, 1972, at age 77. 

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