The Reverend Davis Wasgatt Clark was neither the first nor the last editor of the Methodist Episcopal Ladies' Repository. Yet, by virtue of his ten-year tenure with the magazine, he became the most pivotal to its success. Drawing on what he sensed nineteenth-century churchwomen wanted, Clark brought many innovations to the publication. As a result the Ladies' Repository became a monthly for the whole family and the second largest periodical issued by the Methodist church in the United States.

Neither Clark's involvement in journalism nor his career as a Methodist minister had been assured by his upbringing. He was born on Mount Desert Island, Maine, on 25 February 1812. His parents, John and Sarah Clark, were of Massachusetts stock. Clark was named after his maternal grandfather, Davis Wasgatt, who had been a Revolutionary soldier, a town leader on the island, and a clerk with the Congregational church.

But Wasgatt did...