I’m talking about history – at the MCGS

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / Leave a comment

I like to talk about history, especially the history of the Jonathan Clark House, its occupants, and their lives in early Wisconsin territory and state. Sometimes I get invited to share my research with others, and I put together an illustrated presentation. This coming Friday, April 24, 2026, I’ll be talking to the members of the Milwaukee County Genealogical Society about the German immigrant experience in our area circa 1845–1910, as lived by the extended family of German immigrant, and Clark House occupant, Fred Beckmann.

You’re invited!

My April 24th MCGS presentation will be held in the 1st floor Rotary Club of Milwaukee community meeting room of the Milwaukee Central Public Library Downtown, 814 West Wisconsin Avenue, Milwaukee. The event will start with a short business meeting at 1:00 p.m. My presentation begins about 1:15 p.m. and will last about 45 minutes, followed by plenty of time for questions & answers. The meeting is free and open to the general public, and I hope to see you all there.

Is there more to say about Fred Beckmann?

Indeed there is!

As you may recall from earlier CHH blog posts like (this one) and (this one), Fred Beckmann and his new wife, Lena Hackfeld, lived in the Clark House, and farmed the Clark farm, from 1868 until 1873. Their story connects the history of the early Anglo-American settlement of Mequon with the subsequent influx of German-speaking immigrants to the area.

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It’s our 10th birthday!

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 4 Comments

This blog, Clark House Historian, published its first post 10 years ago today! (And just to be clear, the Clark House Historian blog is ten years old today. Reed Perkins, the Jonathan M. Clark House historian and author of the blog is, alas, a good deal older…)

Time to celebrate!

Our first post was a modest, two-paragraph “welcome” post, reproduced—in its entirety—below:

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RBOH: William Opitz, Plank Road & Index updates

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 4 Comments

I’m still working on several larger Clark House Historian projects, but I still have time to share a few Random Bits O’ History with you…

More Fun with Fraktur

You may remember our recent post, William Opitz – real estate agent (1855), in which we noted the start of a new business venture—a “Land Agency”—by one of Mequon’s earliest and most influential German settlers, Wilhelm Ferdinand “William F.” Opitz (1813 or 1816 – 1882). Well, I found a companion advertisement from W. F. Opitz, published on page 2 of the Milwaukee Banner und Volksfreund on May 18, 1855:

What’s it say? Read on, for all the details…

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Caroline M. (Clark) Woodward – profile, 1891

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

In our previous post I made use of a paragraph from a recently rediscovered 1891 profile of Jonathan and Mary (Turck) Clark’s eldest child, Caroline M. Clark, later Mrs. C. M. Woodward. Caroline was the most publicly active, visible, and well-documented of all of the Clark siblings, and we have published a number of blog posts on her life and career, including this comprehensive piece: Caroline M. (Clark) Woodward: a closer look at that 1893 biography. I recommend reading that post and clicking all the links; they lead you to other, detailed CHH posts about specific moments and events in Caroline’s life.

Today I’d like to share with you the complete 1891 profile that I quoted in our March 26, 2026, post. It originally appeared as one long column of text on page 1 of the Lincoln, Nebraska, “New Republic” newspaper, on August 20, 1891. Caroline (1840-1924) was fifty years old when this article appeared, and had another thirty years of active work in the temperance and women’s rights fields ahead of her.

Given the amount of accurate detail in the article, I suspect that the information came directly from Caroline herself. In fact, given how well-written and how accurate the whole profile is, I would not be surprised if Caroline wrote most, or all of it herself. For ease of reading, I have divided the article into several sections, created paragraph headers, and added a few notes on some of the facts mentioned in each section.

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Jonathan and Mary Clark’s first home

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

Home Sweet Home., ca. 1876. [New York: publisher not transcribed]. Library of Congress.

One of the first and most important tasks for any settlers arriving in the recently “opened-for-settlement” Wisconsin Territory was to create some sort of dwelling to shelter themselves as they carved out new farmsteads amid the dense hardwood forests. But what sort of quickly-built structures did our immigrants first construct and take shelter in?

Obviously, the big, stone, full-basement, two-story, Greek Revival style Jonathan Clark House, with its “1848” inscription carved over the front door, and its many double-hung sash windows, was not a hastily-made “first shelter” for newlyweds Jonathan and Mary (Turck) Clark. They must have had another, smaller, first home. What was that first home like? Until now we have assumed that the Clarks’ first home was probably a log cabin, and not some kind of “shanty,” but we didn’t really know. In today’s post, we share with you a recently discovered document that—I believe—solves this mystery once and for all…

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William Opitz – real estate agent (1855)

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

I’m in the thick of researching and writing several series of illustrated posts for the blog, as well as for some upcoming public talks that I’m giving this spring and summer, and it’s kept me from posting lately. And as is often the case with these big projects, I find I have so much fresh material, and so many interesting, interconnecting, events and stories, that the problem becomes sorting and organizing all that information, and all those images, into coherent and not-overwhelmingly-long posts and presentations. (Heh. We’ll see about that…)

Anyway, while I continue my writing and editing behind the scenes, I thought you might enjoy this random bit of Mequon history I found while looking for some other, entirely different, information. It’s an advertisement originally dated May 21, 1855; this copy was published on page 3 of the Milwaukee Banner und Volksfreund [Banner and People’s Friend] on February 6, 1856. The ad announces a new business venture by one of Mequon’s earliest and most influential German settlers, Wilhelm Ferdinand “William F.” Opitz (1813 or 1816 – 1882):

How’s that? Your German language and Fraktur-reading skills are a bit too rusty to enjoy this historical advert? Well, just click and read on for all the details!

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Indexing. Again!

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

Clark House Historian is about to begin its tenth year of investigating, interpreting and sharing the stories of the Clarks, their relatives, neighbors, friends, and the world in which they lived. With that in mind, I’ve been looking through the blog, and thinking about making a few, useful updates to the site. Chief among these would be a decent, searchable index to all those posts.

(Still) “under construction“…

From our first post in late-March, 2016, through early March, 2026, I’ve researched, written and published almost 500 Clark House Historian posts comprising about a half-million words, and illustrated with hundreds of historic maps, photographs, lithographs and other images. That’s a lot of information to organize and search.

So even though the blog has a decent SEARCH BY KEYWORDS(s) function, and each post is kind-of, sort-of indexed with SEARCH BY CATEGORY labels and SEARCH BY TAGS (mostly tagged by date or decade), it has become more difficult to find specific information and archived CHH source materials than I’d prefer. So in 2021 I started indexing the blog. Unfortunately, in the five (!) years since 2021 there’s been a long pause in indexing because, frankly, I don’t much care for indexing.

What I really need is an intelligent team of trained, experienced and eagle-eyed indexers, like these women at the catalog cards processing department of the Library of Congress in the late 1910s.

Harris & Ewing, photographer. Librarians working with catalog cards in the Processing Department of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. [detail]. [Between 1917 and 1920?]. Library of Congress.

Unfortunately, I can’t afford an intelligent team of trained, experienced, and detail-oriented indexers like those women at the Library of Congress in the late 1910s. So—alas!—it’s up to me to get the indexing project moving again, bit by bit. (But, as my astute, dear father used to say, “that’s a fine speech, son…” so we’ll see.)

Anyway, if you’ve looked through the blog’s INDEX, tried the SEARCH BY KEYWORD function, and you’ve sorted by CATEGORIES, and still can’t find the CHH post, image, or other information that you’re looking for, please let me know via the blog’s CONTACT form and I’ll do my best to help.

And if you’d like to look at the most recent additions to the CHH INDEX, click “Read More” or “Continue reading” for the details…

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Celebrating our Irish history

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / Leave a comment

Mark your calendar! This Saturday, March 7, 2026, from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon, the Jonathan Clark House Museum is hosting a St. Patrick’s Day event.

Graphic from the JCH website News & Events page

Did you know that in the early days of settlement, much of Cedarburg—and a surprising portion of Mequon—was home to Irish immigrants? Come by the Jonathan Clark House Museum on Saturday and find out if your home had Irish neighbors! Come look at historical maps while you nibble on house made butter and Irish soda bread and enjoy festive music on the Celtic Harp. Event co-sponsored by the Cedarburg History Museum.

The museum is located at the corner of Bonniwell and Cedarburg roads in Mequon, Wisconsin. We look forward to seeing you on Saturday! And as St. Patrick’s Day approaches, you might be interested in catching up on some previous, Irish-themed Clark House Historian posts. Just read on, click all the links, and Erin go Bragh!

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Mysteries (and errors)…

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / Leave a comment

Our previous two posts (here and here) examined the 1888 recollections of a Mequon man that migrated from Germany to Mequon-Thiensville in 1848-1849, just after completing his schooling. His recollections were published in the form of two “letters” addressed to the Cedarburg News in May, 1888. Both letters were signed with just the initial “L.” Today I’d like to see what we know about our author — “L.” — and whether we can identify him.

But—before we start solving mysteries, there are errors to correct…

Updated dates!

I goofed! I fell into a record-keeping, citation-making trap. As I started this new post, I decided to take yet another look at my sources. And much to my chagrin, I noted that the date at the head of each of our “Mequon Correspondence” letters does not agree with the date that each letter was actually printed in the Cedarburg News. That’s not so strange; I would expect that a letter would be written, dated, and sent to the paper’s editor before the newspaper’s date of publication. But in our case, the letters are dated almost a full week after the newspaper date of publication. What’s that all about?

Anyway, here’s the correct info:
• the first letter of two, titled “Mequon Corrspondeence” [sic], was published on page 2 of the Cedarburg News on May 16, 1888, but the “letter” was dated, in its headline, “May 21, 1888.”
• the second letter, titled “Mequon Correspondence. [Continued.]” appeared the following week, May 23, 1888, also on page 2, but the “letter” was dated, in its headline, “May 28, 1888.”

For the record, earlier today (28 Feb. 2026) I added this corrected date information to thosse two previous CHH posts. And now that we’ve settled that, let’s see what we can do to solve today’s History Mystery!

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How’d they get here? – Germany to Mequon, c. 1848 (part 2)

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

UPDATED, Feb. 28, 2026, to correct erroneous dates of publication of the two Cedarburg News “letters.“

Migration memories, 1848, continued

In our previous post we presented the first part of a personal memoir of travel from Germany to New York City and, eventually, Mequon-Thiensville, circa 1848. Those recollections were published as the first of two “letters” to the Cedarburg News in May, 1888. Both letters were pseudonymous, signed only with the initial “L.”

The first letter of the pair, titled “Mequon Corrspondeence” [sic], was published on page 2 of the Cedarburg News on May 16, 1888, but note that the letter itself was dated, in its headline, “May 21, 1888.” If you missed it, I recommend you begin with that earlier post and then come back here for the conclusion. Today we complete the author’s reminiscences with excerpts from his second letter, titled “Mequon Correspondence. [Continued.]” appeared the following week, May 23, 1888, also on page 2, but the letter was dated, in its headline, “May 28, 1888.”

An 1840s “prank” in NYC

The May 28th, 1888, letter begins with two anecdotes from our immigrant’s first day in New York City. The first incident involves a schoolboy “prank” in which a bottomless peach basked is used to trap the arms of an unsuspecting “fat old bachelor, the universal fool of our ship [illegible] to the greatest merriment of the bystanders.”

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