The Clark House Historian blog is two years old today!

Our first post, “Welcome!,” was posted on March 29, 2016, and can be found here; it is also anchored at the top of the home page. More substantial posts (with photos!) followed  in April, introducing Jonathan M. Clark, his wife Mary Turck and the Clark House. In the years since, we’ve published 29 blog posts, almost 20,000 words, and dozens of historic images and maps. We’ve had over 2000 views from 512 visitors. Our readers are mostly from the United States, but we also have readers in Canada, the EU, South Korea, Germany and the Netherlands. Thank you all for your support!

Whether you are a new reader, or you’ve been following the blog since the beginning, here are some suggestions for catching up on missed posts or finding specific information that interests you:

There are several ways to navigate the blog, and it is designed to be used on all kinds of devices: desktop and laptop computers, tablets and iPads, and smartphones of all kinds. Here’s  a detail of our main page header and main menu (as seen on most computers):

Anytime you want to get to the homepage and see the latest posts, click “Home.” The “About” section discusses the goals of the blog and includes a short bio of the author, our copyright notice, and a reminder that the intrusive and annoying advertisements are not there by choice; they are a required part of our WordPress blog. (Yes, we could make them go away by paying “just a few dollars a year,” but if you have some spare change, it would be better used to support the Jonathan Clark House Museum directly.) And if you’d like to surf over to the latest edition of the Jonathan Clark House Museum website, just click that link on the main menu.

There is a “Leave a Reply” box at the end of each post, and I encourage your feedback and questions. Any comments or questions you enter in “Leave a Reply” will be published as part of that particular post. If you’d like to contact me offline, please click the “Contact” link and fill out the message form. I’ll be happy to reply, and your communication will remain private unless I request, and you give me permission, to publish.

If you’d like to get an email notification when each new blog article is posted, scroll a little farther down the right side of the page to:

Enter your email address in the box, click the black “Follow” button, and that’s it. You’ll never miss another new post. Your email will be kept private and will not be sold or shared with anyone else without your permission.

If you’re looking for information on a particular person or other topic, the fastest way to find relevant blog posts  is to enter a word or phrase in the “Search…” box,      to the right and just below the main menu, and click the green SEARCH button. You’ll get a long list of blog posts to choose from.

To read the blog posts in the order they were written, go to the “Archives” section and click on one of the months; the “Archives” list descends in reverse chronological order.

Posts have also been labeled by categories. Click on the “Select Category” menu button and you’ll open the ever-expanding list of blog categories. Select one that interests you:

Each post is also characterized by “Tags.” I use the Tag function to label each post by the relevant decade(s) covered.  Unfortunately, there is no sidebar shortcut to the “Tag” function. But at the end of most posts you’ll see one or more Tag icons like this:

Click the Tag of the decade that interests you, and you will get a list of posts that include information about the same decade.

I hope the Clark House Historian posts inspire you to learn more about the house, the family and neighbors, and the history of Old Washington/Ozaukee counties. If you are interested, I have included a list of “More Info” links. Most are free sites; those that are not are labeled “($).” Some pay sites, such as Ancestry.com, can be accessed for free at your local library. I encourage you to take advantage of as many of these resources as you can. And in particular, support your local historical societies. They do invaluable work preserving and interpreting rare and unique local history and resources, often on a shoestring budget.

Finally, readers using the site on tablets and smartphones will notice the site layout is a bit different; this makes the site easier to read and use on a small screen. All the same content and elements are there, you may just need to scroll down to the bottom of the screen, or click slightly different icons to get similar results. For example, here’s the iPhone version of the home page:

To search the site for a particular topic or article, click on the magnifying glass icon (right middle). The “Follow” icon is in blue at the bottom right. To open the main menu, click the icon with three parallel horizontal stripes (left middle); when open, it looks like this:

Thanks again for reading! I’m looking forward to sharing another year of Clark House history with you. Please “follow” the blog and be sure to contact me with your questions, comments, corrections, and suggestions for further blog topics. Cheers!