Rufus Lathrop Baker Clarke was born in New Haven County, Connecticut, on June 4, 1817, the son of Thaddeus Clarke and Sarah Baker. Clarke practiced law in Rochester, New York, until 1851 when he moved to Mount Pleasant. He married Anna H. Phillips of Lynn, Massachusetts, on September 17, 1856. Clarke was a member of the 1857 Iowa Constitutional Convention that convened at the Iowa Capitol in Iowa City. On July 28, 1860, he gave an hour speech for a “Lincoln Pole Raising” promoting Abraham Lincoln’s candidacy for presidential election. Rufus moved his family to Washington, D.C., in 1862 and became examiner in chief and then a judge of the Board of Appeals in the U.S. Patent Office from 1869 through 1895. He died August 9, 1910, in Washington, D.C.