“Dashing through the snow…”

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

As I write this, southeastern Wisconsin is in the midst of our first substantial snowfall of Winter, 2025-2026. In Jonathan and Mary Clark’s lifetime, the day after a storm like this meant it was time to hitch up the sleigh and have some fun “dashing through the snow.” Here’s a lightly-revised and expanded repeat of a post that celebrates Clark-era “sleighing time” and “jingle bells.” (And be sure to click the highlighted links for more vintage wintertime images and info.)

Kimmel and Forster, publishers, “Winter Pleasure in the Country,” circa 1865. National Museum of American History, Peters Prints Collection, Smithsonian Institution.1 Note the modest straps of jingle bells on the one-horse sleigh and the much more ostentatious—and louder—straps of bells on the two-horse sleigh.

Last winter, our earlier CHH posts Snow!, Shoveling out -and other winter chores and Stuff Happens – on a sleigh ride, got me wondering again about winter travel in old Washington/Ozaukee county during the Clarks’ era of the mid-1830s through the 1860s or so. Assuming most of the more successful farmers—such as the Clarks, Bonniwells and Turcks—owned a one- or two-horse sleigh, how easy was it to navigate that sleigh on the early county roads? Could you sleigh ride all the way to Milwaukee? And if you could, how long might that take?

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Home to Thanksgiving

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / Leave a comment

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. To celebrate the holiday, I thought I’d reprint a lightly revised version of our now-annual CHH Thanksgiving post, to share with you a few vintage recipes and a nice Currier & Ives lithograph from the period.1

Thanksgiving, 1867

Durrie, George H. and John Schutler, Home to Thanksgiving, ca. 1867, New York, Currier & Ives. National Gallery of Art, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon. Public Domain. Click to to open larger image in a new window.

By 1867, when this sentimental lithograph was first published, the Clark family had been living in the City of Milwaukee’s seventh ward for about six years. Family patriarch Jonathan M. Clark had died a decade earlier, and his only son, Henry M. Clark, had been gone for about a year and a half. Family matriarch Mary (Turck) Clark was living in a house in Milwaukee with her unmarried daughters, Libbie, Persie, Theresa, Laura, Josie and Jennie.

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The American Revolution: are you watching?

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / Leave a comment

The American War of Independence began 250 years ago, more than half a century before the forced removal of Wisconsin’s original native peoples and the beginnings of large-scale, government-sponsored, white settlement in the Wisconsin Territory of the 1830s.

Verger, Jean Baptiste Antoine De, artist, [Soldiers in Uniform], 1781 (detail). The soldier on the right was a New England militiaman, one of many New Englanders (including, we believe, Jonathan Clark’s kin) that fought for the Patriot cause. More on this image, below.

PBS is commemorating the big anniversary by sponsoring and broadcasting “The American Revolution,” a six-part, 12-hour documentary film by Ken Burns and company, exploring the roots of the conflict, the military and diplomatic progress of the war, and the contributions to, and effects of, the war on its many military and civilian participants, including white, Black, and Native American men and women, both Loyalists & Patriots.

I’ve seen the first four episodes and found them lively, interesting, informative, and sometimes deeply moving. I’m no expert on the Revolutionary era, but I know quite a bit, and I find the series includes all the “important” events and persons that one would expect, along with all kinds of nuance and detail which are new to me.

It’s an excellent documentary, well worth your time, and is currently streaming—for free—on PBS.org. And in case you are wondering: yes, there are many topics in this Revolutionary War documentary that connect to, and later influence, the lives many of the early Mequon settler families, including the Clark and Turck families. In particular, be sure to watch the whole first episode, a clear and detailed explanation of the complex background and causes of the fight for American independence.

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Veterans Day, 2025

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

Veterans Day is today. For a perspective on the day—and our early Mequon veterans—here’s a post originally published at Clark House Historian on November 11, 2016, and revised, expanded and republished several times since.

Armistice Day — Veterans Day

One hundred and seven years ago today, at the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month—Paris time—the Armistice of Compiègne took effect, officially ending the fighting on the Western Front and marking the end of World War I, the optimistically named “War to End All Wars.”

In the United States, the commemoration of the war dead and the Allied victory began in 1919 as Armistice Day, by proclamation of President Woodrow Wilson. Congress created Armistice Day as a legal holiday in 1938. Starting in 1945, a World War II veteran named Raymond Weeks proposed that the commemorations of November 11 be expanded to celebrate all veterans, living and dead. In 1954 Congress and President Eisenhower made that idea official, and this is what we commemorate today. There are many veterans with a connection to the Jonathan Clark house. We honor a few of them in this post.

114th Regimental Reunion, May 30, 1897, Norwich, N. Y., Library of Congress [cropped and adjusted]. Many Clark neighbors served during the Civil War, and many remained active in the Grand Army of the Republic, the national organization for Union Army veterans, including these men from rural New York, gathered together in 1897.

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Finding what you want: a few tips for readers

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / Leave a comment

Sometimes a blog is like a labyrinth…

JCH Bonniwell family Bible, MS inscription “John” and drawing of a Labyrinth, First […] Concordance, sig. A1 verso (detail)

I’m looking forward to blogging more regularly, and I hope you enjoy the upcoming posts. But I’ve been publishing Clark House Historian for almost ten years (!), and I know it can be hard to navigate the blog and find the particular historical information, photos, maps and other images that you might be looking for. Today’s post has a few tips to help you make your way through the twists and turns of the Clark House Historian information labyrinth.

Tip No. 1: Click the links!

If you’d like to view a larger, clearer version of almost any image on the blog: click the image (or, sometimes, the link in the caption), and a new full-size image will open in a new window. Other links (highlighted in the blog’s signature minty-green color) will connect you with related blog posts and online sources for further information.

And by the way, you can read the blog on your phone and open and zoom in on the photos, drawings, maps and other images. But I create the CHH posts on a device with a good-sized screen, and I recommend viewing on the largest screen that you can.

Finally, and most importantly, be sure to click the Continue reading—> link, typically found after the first image and paragraph or two. There is a lot more to be found “below the fold.”

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Liz Hickman (1944 – 2025)

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

I am saddened to report that my dear friend and fellow Clark & Turck family researcher and descendant Elizabeth “Liz” Alice (Wenger) Hickman has died, at home with her family, at the age of 81.

A life well lived.

Her family has posted a lovely obituary online and it’s worth reading. It not only reviews Liz’s personal and professional achievements—and they were many—it also manages to give the reader a good sense of her lively, intelligent, and fun personality. These two excerpts were particularly good at capturing Liz as I knew her:

Liz was a woman of determination and unmatched work ethic, whose approach to life was reflected in her annual back-to-school advice to her daughters to “sit in the front row and ask lots of questions.”

[…] With an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, Liz read widely, was a passionate follower of current events, a collector of recipes, and a world traveler. She was keenly interested in technology, and often one of the earliest adopters in her family of any new technology or gadget.

Cousin Liz

Her obituary also recalls that “in retirement, Liz enjoyed genealogy, especially as it allowed her to find ‘new’ cousins and expand the family.” In 2012 it was my good fortune to become one of Liz’s newly-discovered cousins. Liz had noticed some of my early online corrections and additions to Turck and Clark documents and sources, and then contacted me through a genealogy message board. We exchanged emails and began to collaborate, and in no time we formed a happy and productive relationship as researchers and as kin.

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Hot off the press…

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / Leave a comment

The new JCH Newsletter is here!

Hot off the (virtual) presses, the latest issue of the Jonathan Clark House Newsletter is here! Seven pages of JCH news, announcements, and photographs, recalling some of our summer 2025 activities and looking ahead to Fall at the Clark House. And fortunately for us—living in the 21st-century—no hand-typesetting, manual printing, or acid baths for copperplate engravings were required.

For all the details, and your own pdf copy of the new newsletter, click “Continue reading”…

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School supplies…and more, 1850

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / Leave a comment

Labor Day has come and gone, and for many this marks the unofficial “end of summer.” With that in mind, I thought you might enjoy a lightly revised and enhanced re-post of this CHH piece from 2023.

Many students start classes today. Others began school a week or two ago. Many Wisconsin families have spent the past few weeks (or months) preparing for the new school year, shopping for “Back to School” deals on clothing and school supplies at local, chain, and online retailers.

Harrison’s Columbian inks, black, scarlet, red, blue. [United States, publisher not transcribed], c. 1846. Library of Congress

Shopping for school supplies at the start of the school year is nothing new. But the origin of the now ubiquitous use of “Back to School!” as a marketing phrase is obscure. From what I’ve observed, it seems very much a post-World War II phenomenon. Yet with our current focus on three-ring binders, zippered pencil cases, and boxes of 64 Crayolas (with the built-in sharpener!), have you ever wondered what kind of school or office supplies might have been necessary or useful for Jonathan and Mary Clark, their children, and their neighbors? For a fun comparison, let’s take a look at just two of the many relevant advertisements from the columns of the Clarks’ local papers, in this case the [Milwaukee] Daily Free Democrat, November 2, 1850, page 4…

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I’ve been busy…at the Portage! (part 2)

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

In a recent CHH post I wrote about my Saturday, August 16 visit to, and presentation at, the WSDAR’s excellent Fort Winnebago Surgeons Quarters historic site. That was worth a road trip in itself. But since I was heading up to Portage, I decided to make a history weekend out of the occasion. So on Friday the 15th, I spent a fine few hours touring the nearby Historic Indian Agency House and museum, just a short distance from the Surgeon’s Quarters across the old channel of the Fox River.

Historic Indian Agency House, 2025. Photo credit: Reed Perkins

The Historic Indian Agency House

The Historic Indian Agency House (HIAH) is one of Wisconsin’s oldest museums and a “must see”, for those of you interested in the early days of the Wisconsin Territory and the history of the state’s original Native American inhabitants and their forced removal during white settlement in the 1820s, ’30s and beyond. Like the nearby Fort Winnebago and its remaining Surgeon’s Quarters, the story of the HIAH overlaps and intersects with the story of Jonathan M. Clark and his 1833-1836 military service at Fort Winnebago’s headquarters post, Fort Howard, in Green Bay.

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