Hull was born in a log house in Akron, New York on May 24, 1884. He was born to a powerful father who was known to have a violent temper. His father was largely uneducated and married his mother, a shy woman from Connecticut, when she was 15. Clark’s father didn’t get a lot of schooling because his father worked a lot as a child, so he didn’t learn how to read and was eventually taught by his wife. At the age of three or four, Hull and his family moved to a farm in Michigan. Here, he and his younger brother, Wayne, helped the farm by performing manual labor and chores around the house.