Upon receiving news that irreplaceable historical documents were being abused and defaced in Frankfort, Dr Clark rushed to the scene from Lexington. There he found that pages of military records of Kentuckians involved in the Battle of 1812, the Mexican war and the Civil War were being used as temporary sleeping cots and pipe lighters. He appealed to the newly elected Gov. A.B. "Happy" Chandler to have the documents moved to the Lexington campus. If not for this intervention, vast portions of Kentucky's History would have been missing from the Archives that are preserved to this day. Clark's subsequent appeals to the Legislature and the Governors led to the eventual establishment of the Kentucky Archives Commission in 1957.