I’m currently (happily) distracted as I get ready for a special family event, and blogging may be sparse for the next several days. But I’m still chipping away on our search for Jonathan M. Clark’s roots, looking for possibly-related Clark names in the early Land Petitions of Lower Canada, 1764-1841. Which is kind of like doing a Word Search puzzle, only with faded documents and sometimes-illegible 18th-century handwriting.

Beginner Level

Would you like to join in the search and Help the Historian? Here’s a “Searching for JMC’s Roots”-themed word search puzzle I made, just to get you warmed up:

Click the image to open and print your own copies of this version of the puzzle. Or, if you’d like to play online, just click this link: https://thewordsearch.com/puzzle/6172120/clark-house-word-search/

Look for the Clark House related words in all directions: horizontally, vertically or diagonally, both forwards and backwards. You can solve the online puzzle as many times as you like, and each time you play again, the layout of the puzzle changes. (If you play online, ignore the big orange rectangular button at the bottom of the screen that says “Next→”. It’s just a link to a page of unrelated ads.)

Each time you play you can also change the level of difficulty. Once you’ve developed your word-finding skills with our online puzzle, it’s time to Level Up!

Expert Edition

Here’s one of my current “puzzles,” the original 1792 Leaders & Associates’ petition to the Crown for a grant of land that would eventually become the Township of Stanstead, Lower Canada. Continue reading (below) to view the front side of the petition page. How many “Clark” signatures can you find? And can you transcribe all their first names accurately?

By the way: be sure to click each petition image to open an enlargeable, full-resolution copy of the document in a new, larger window. It is much, much easier to read these pages from the full-resolution images.

Ready for more?

Here’s the back side of the same document:

Bonus points if you find and transcribe signatures with surnames of Morrill or Morrell (or other variant spellings). And yes, there is one “Jonathan Clark” signature on this 1792 document. Of course, it won’t be our JMC (he wasn’t born until two decades after this petition was signed), but it could be a relative. Or not.

Have fun

Have fun with the puzzle, and with the petition pages. And if you do find and transcribe some names, please send them along. I’d appreciate the extra help. You can make a public comment by using the Leave a Reply box (below), or you can contact me privately by using the blog’s Contact function.

I’m working on a full length post about this petition, complete with full bibliographic details. That may come in a day or two, or perhaps sometime next week.

Cheers and good luck!

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P. S. Are you stumped by today’s Clark House word search? Here’s a link to the solution of the version of the puzzle shown above.