Catherine (Kate) Pickens Upson was born in Alabama in 1851, to Edwin Upson and Priscilla Maxwell. She was raised in Charlemont, Massachusetts and graduated from Wheaton Female Seminary (now Wheaton College), Norton, Mass., in 1869. In 1874, she married Edward P. Clark, and they had three sons, Charles, John and George. She contributed articles and columns to periodicals including Godey's Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, Christian Herald, Harper's and various children's magazines. She was editor of the Springfield (Mass.) Republican, Good Cheer Magazine, and eventually the New York Evening Post. She published several books (mostly children's), short stories, and a novel.

After her husband's death in 1903, Kate Clark lectured extensively throughout U.S. on popular, cultural, literary, and political subjects including suffrage. She resided in New York City and was active in the suffrage and temperance movements, and founded the Brooklyn's Women's Republican Club. She taught courses on lecturing at Columbia University and was a trustee of Wheaton College from 1907 until her death in 1935.

[See also Clark Family Tree in reading room]