Peter Turck and Irish Relief

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / Leave a comment

It’s St. Patrick’s Day, and to celebrate, here’s an update of my CHH post from March 17, 2021. Slàinte!

Today is St. Patrick’s Day, originally the religious observance of the feast day of the principal patron saint of Eire.1 In honor of the day, let’s take a look at a few aspects of Irish life in early southeast Wisconsin and the involvement of Mary (Turck) Clark’s father Peter Turck in a civic effort to relieve Irish suffering during the Great Famine.

Irish immigrants in early Wisconsin

The first white visitors to Wisconsin were seventeenth-century French-Canadian explorers, priests and fur trappers, at home along Wisconsin’s lakes and rivers. They were followed by a smattering of British and French settlers in the mid- and later-eighteenth century. Cornish lead miners arrived in the southwest corner of the territory around the turn of the nineteenth-century. And in the mid-1830s, when the federal government officially “opened” the southeast corner of Wisconsin for settlement, there was a large influx of New Englanders and New Yorkers.

There were also a substantial number immigrants from across the sea among the Wisconsin pioneers of the 1830s and ’40s, including settlers from Upper and Lower Canada, Nova Scotia, Great Britain, the Netherlands, the German-speaking lands, and Ireland. By the time of the 1850 federal decennial census, Irish men, women, and children comprised the second-largest group of foreign-born immigrants in the state, surpassed in number only by immigrants from the German-speaking lands.

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The Bonniwells & Co. and the 1850 census–part 4: “in” Wisconsin!

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / Leave a comment

In our last post, we discovered that none of our Bonniwell gold rush expedition members could be found on the surviving population schedules for the 1850 federal census in California.1 Does that mean they were not to be found anywhere on the national 1850 enumeration? Well, no. It turns out that while the Bonniwell men and their companions were physically present in California, they managed to be enumerated in…Wisconsin?

Currier & Ives. Home Sweet Home, c. 1874. New York: Published by Currier & Ives. Library of Congress.

There’s no place like home

You might think that once every ten years, when the census enumerator came to call, he or she would simply speak to a responsible adult at each address and write down the information for all of the “inhabitants” of each household. And that is pretty much how it was done.2

Naturally, there could be complications. What if some members of the household were away, perhaps working the fields, or at the mill? Maybe someone had to go to town, or farther away, on business. What about a child that is out of town at school or college? Or… what if the head of household had gone prospecting in the wilds of California’s gold district?

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The Bonniwells & Co. and the 1850 (and ’52) census – part 3

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

Our previous post1 left us with two important, unanswered questions: Could the Bonniwells and their companions have been recorded on the 1850 federal population census in California? And if they could be counted, were they? After all, travel through the gold camps in the high mountains could be pretty difficult in the best of times:

Gold miners, El Dorado, California, ca. 1848, before 1853. Library of Congress.

Add the rain and snow of a typical fall and winter in California’s gold region and the enumerator’s task must have been very difficult. But the answer is yes, it was possible that our Mequon prospectors could have been counted in the 1850 census in California. The enumeration of the gold mining counties began well after the official enumeration date of June 1st, 1850, and the process continued in some gold region counties until the last weeks of December, many months after the arrival of the overland contingent of the Bonniwell expedition.

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Presidents’ Day, 1844

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / Leave a comment

Today is Presidents’ Day, the descendant of the federal holiday originally created in 1879 to celebrate the birthday anniversary of George Washington, our first president and, arguably, the “indispensable man” in America’s fight for independence.

Presidents’ Day did not exist during the early days of Mequon settlement, but the Clarks, Turcks, Bonniwells and their neighbors—whether native-born Americans or recent immigrants—were generally patriotic folk and to one degree or another their politics were mostly free-soil, anti-slavery and pro-Union.

So in their patriotic spirit, here’s a colorful presidential salute for you from the Clarks’ era. It was published in New York in 1844 by Nathaniel Currier, whose prints were for sale, at affordable prices, even in remote locations such as the new Wisconsin Territory.

Currier, Nathaniel (American, 1813-1888). Presidents of the United States, 1844. Hand-colored lithograph on wove paper, 13 x 9in. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Mrs. Harry Elbaum in honor of Daniel Brown, art critic. Color and exposure adjusted.

What happened to “Lincoln’s Birthday”?

I grew up in Illinois, the “Land of Lincoln,” where Old Abe’s birthday was, and remains, a state holiday. So we had holidays to honor the birthdays of both presidents: Lincoln on February 12, and Washington on February 22. How we got from those separate, specific commemorations to a generic federal holiday (and three day weekend) providing “an occasion to remember all U.S. presidents, to honor Abraham Lincoln’s and Washington’s birthdays together, or any single president of choice,” is a complicated story. Here’s the main info in a nutshell:

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Detour…

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / Leave a comment

Rothstein, Arthur, photographer. Detour sign, Chillicothe, Ohio, 1940, Library of Congress (public domain).

I know, I know. Clark House Historian blog posts have been sparse lately.

It’s not for lack of material. I have a big backlog of Clark House history, with many interesting maps, images and documents to write about and share with you. But my history research—and writing—have taken a bit of a detour over the last few weeks…

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Still digging…

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / Leave a comment

I’m still digging in the archives, trying to wrap up our ongoing exploration of the Bonniwell family adventures in the California gold fields, bring (almost) everyone back to Mequon, and finish our (unexpectedly long and thorough) look at the life of Jonathan and Mary Clark’s brother-in-law, Alfred T. Bonniwell.

I’m currently mining a rich vein of 1850 and ’52 census documents for California and Wisconsin, as well as contemporary ships’ passenger manifests and published newspaper announcements of maritime comings and goings. Once again, I have a large pile of raw material to sift through and write about, and it’s taking more time than expected. I hope to have things organized for you next week. In the meanwhile, I thought you might enjoy this painting, made in California at the same time as the Bonniwell expedition, Miners in the Sierra:

As always, be sure to click the image to open a larger, higher-resolution image in a new window.

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