Brother Stanislaus (John) Clark, C.S.C. (1838-1916)

Brother Stanislaus (John) Clarke, C.S.C. was born in Ireland and entered Holy Cross when he was 26 years old.  He was a capable student and became a proponent of promoting the use of shorthand.  He taught the system of “sound writing” at Notre Dame for many years and made many personal improvements to the system.  Sir Isaac Pitman, who invented shorthand in 1837, considered Brother Stanislaus both a scholarly colleague and a good friend.  Father Daniel Eldred Hudson, C.S.C., who was appointed the editor of the Ave Maria in 1875, considered Brother Stanislaus to be one of the early founders of the Press and the periodical.  In 1865, Father Sorin proposed to the sisters that they publish a magazine “in honor of Our Blessed Mother.”  The vote was unanimous and Mother Angela Gillespie and her sisters “pledged themselves to assist [Father Sorin] in this great work.”  Father Sorin, the first publisher, was followed by Father Neal Gillespie, Mother Angela’s brother.  In February of 1973, “the actual printing was turned over to the Sisters who received their first lessons from Brother Stanislaus.”  In his 1916 obituary published in the Scholastic, it was said of Brother Stanislaus that “he was a model of every Christian and religious virtue [and] a man of varied talents, all of which he faithfully employed in the service of God for nearly a half century.”