David Clark was born on May 15, 1877, in Raleigh, North Carolina. The son of Chief Justice Walter Clark, David Clark was a former cotton mill proprietor-turned-journalist who started his own journal, The Southern Textile Bulletin, in March 1911. Over the course of his career, Clark continued to grow his company such that by the time of his death in November 1955, he was lauded as a "nationally known publisher of semi-technical journals and leader in textile industry and Rotary International affairs. Clark died in Charlotte, North Carolina on November 14, 1955.