Updated, August 4, 2024, to add a few explanatory links, to clarify the years of arrival of B. Clow and D. Maxon, and to clarify which families stayed in Washington/Ozaukee county, and which sold out and moved on.

Home away from home

Until the late-1850s, there were no railroads connecting Mequon to Milwaukee. If you needed to go to the city—for shopping, shipping, social calls or legal business—you either had to ride a horse, a wagon, a carriage (a sleigh in the winter), or simply walk there and back. It was about a 19 mile journey, over roads of dubious quality and variable states of repair. Even in fine weather, a one way trip might take the better part of the day.

So it was not unusual for Mequon farmers, such as the Clarks and their neighbors, to need a place to stay overnight when they ventured to the city. And from early days, one of the top destinations for Milwaukee travelers was the American House hotel. In 1844, the American House looked like this…

Advertisement, “American House,” [Prairieville (later Waukesha), Wisconsin] American Freeman, 28 Sept 1844 p 4

Take a moment to click the image and open a larger version in a new window. Zoom in and admire the couples strolling on the balconies and the arriving, or departing, stagecoach at the front door. All in all this looks pretty deluxe, by 1840s’ standards. But the hotel business, then as now, was always changing. Less than six years later the American House would be expanded, refurnished, and under new management…

New and improved!

A new advertisement, on page 3 of the Milwaukee Weekly Wisconsin for July 3, 1850, had all the details:

And what did the newly enlarged American House look like? The same advertisement included this woodcut:

It appears the new rooms were added to the back of the original building. (It also appears that guests still like to arrive in a stagecoach and stroll on the balconies.)

How do we know that JMC stayed here?

How do we know Jonathan Clark stayed at the American House hotel? It was in the papers! In the 19th-century it was common for newspapers to list the names and places of origin for people arriving and staying at the “principal hotels.” And on page 2 of the September 27, 1850 issue of the Milwaukee Sentinel, we find Mequon’s J. M. Clark near the top of the first column of the Thursday, September 26th, arrivals at the American House.

Why was JMC in Milwaukee?

What brought Jonathan Clark to Milwaukee in late September, 1850? The next names on this list, members of the Clow family of Athens, New York give us a clue. “R. Clow, Jr.” is almost certainly Richard Clow, Jr., Mary (Turck) Clark’s first cousin. Richard’s mother, Comfort (Gay) Clow was the older sister of Mary Clark’s mother, Rachael (Gay) Turck. Accompanying Richard Clow, Jr., to Milwaukee are “Mrs. A. Clow” (probably one of Richard’s many sisters or sisters-in-law) and two or more “Misses Clow,” all from Athens, Greene county, New York, for many generations the home of the Gay and Clow (also spelled Clough, Klow, Klauw) families.

Farther down the same column we find “J. Turk Mequon,” very likely James Byron Turck, youngest son of Peter Turck, and Mary Clark’s younger brother. And two lines below “J. Turk Mequon,” we find “B. Clow West Bend,” which I believe is Barnet “Barney” Clow, Richard’s brother, Clark family friend and kin, and the likely focal point of this sad reunion.

A family in mourning

Jonathan Clark and the Turck and Bonniwell families arrived in Wisconsin in the later 1830s. They were among the very earliest settlers of Mequon and Washington county. Future Clark brother-in-law Densmore W. Maxon and cousin Barney Clow arrived a bit later, around 1843 and 1846, respectively. The families were closely related by birth and marriage, and were quickly noted for their involvement in local government and business affairs. My study of local land records shows that Jonathan M. Clark helped his wife’s cousin Barney Clow invest in several parcels of land in Washington county, including one parcel just south of the Clark House.

Why this apparent family reunion in September, 1850? I believe they have gathered to mourn together, and probably attend to legal matters, following the recent untimely deaths of Richard’s sister-in-law, young Hannah (Maxon) Clow—the wife of Richard’s brother Barnet “Barney” Clow—and the infant Melvin Clow, the second of Hannah and Barney Clow’s two now-deceased children.

What happened to Barney Clow and his family?

Barney Clow was about 27 years old when he married 20 year old Hannah Jane Maxon, in Wisconsin, sometime around 1848. Their first child, daughter Frances, was born and died in 1848. Their second child, Melvin, was born in June, 1850, and died two months later. Hannah died at about the same time, on August 21, 1850. She was only 21 years, 8 month, and 12 days old. Hannah and Melvin were buried next to Frances in the Maxon family cemetery in the Town of Polk, Washington county. The three share a gravestone there.

Barney Clow had been a successful farmer and investor in the half-dozen or so years that he lived in Wisconsin. But it seems that the death of his wife and children drove him to make a complete break with the the state. He went back to Greene county, New York and, in 1852, appointed his relative, John G. Clough, of West Bend, Washington county, as his power of attorney to supervise the sale of his Wisconsin property.

Barney Clow then went west, to try his luck in the placer mines of the California gold fields. By 1858, he had abandoned mining and opened a livery stable in North San Juan, California. By 1859 he was living and ranching in Washoe county, Nevada. He married twice more. The second marriage is not well documented, but he may have married one Julia Caroline Churchill in Nevada in 1871; she died there in 1876. In 1878 Barney was married for a third time, to Nova Scotia emigrant Jessie R. Frazier. They raised five foster children together, four girls and one boy. Jessie (Frazier) Clow died in 1900.

Ranching made Barney Clow wealthy, and he lived in Washoe county from about 1859 until his death, at his spacious home in Reno, in 1902. He was 80 years old.

Postscript: the land business

Mary Clark’s cousin Barney Clow only lived in Washington/Ozaukee county for about five or six years, but during that time he and Jonathan M. Clark were involved in several land deals. I have not yet had the time to examine all the relevant records, but my initial impression is that Barney and JMC both benefited financially from these transactions.

Barney Clow and Jonathan Clark were not the only settlers in the Clarks’ circle that bought and sold land to make a profit, or help a relative do so. Mary Clark’s father Peter Turck was, in many respects, Mequon’s earliest and most enthusiastic settlement promoter, and he made frequent land transactions. Yet by the mid-1850s he had left his Mequon sawmill business, moved to Milwaukee, and concentrated on the practice of law, which included dealing in real estate. His son James Byron Turck followed in his father’s footsteps, practicing law, buying and selling real estate, and founding several briefly successful Milwaukee businesses (notably the Cream City Street Railway and the Diamond Ink Co.).

Neighbor William T. Bonniwell appears to have acquired substantial capital and was involved in many real estate deals in the towns of Mequon, Cedarburg and Hamburgh (later Grafton) and beyond. One of William Bonniwell’s notable business partners was Hamburgh/Grafton postmaster and businessman Phineas M. Johnson. (Regular readers of this blog will remember that W. T. Bonniwell and P.M. Johnson were the co-organizers of the 1849-1850 “Bonniwell expeditions” to the California Gold Rush.) And Clark quasi-brother-in-law by marriage Philip Moss was also involved in real estate and probate law for much of his adult life.

Mary Clark’s brother-in-law Densmore W. Maxon—husband of Mary’s sister Elizabeth Turck, and older brother of the late Hannah (Maxon) Clow—was a man of many talents. He was an early Washington county surveyor and land agent, and purchased a number of lucrative parcels in the Town of Polk. He became a successful business man; for many years he owned and operated a sawmill, a grist mill and a creamery there.

Advertisement, “Land Agency.” D. W. [Densmore William] Maxon, Milwaukee Weekly Sentinel, July 27, 1844. page 2, see Note 2, below, for more.

All of which is to say that many members of Jonathan and Mary (Turck) Clark’s extended family lived up to the reputation of many of the early “American” or so-called “Yankee-Yorker” settlers of southeastern Wisconsin: they came early, bought low, stayed for a while, sold high, and moved on to make new deals in new places.³ The details of the extended Clark family’s role in these real estate transactions looks to be a big, complicated, intriguing story, but one that will have to wait for another day.

Back soon with more Clark House history.

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NOTES:

1. I actually blogged about one of the Clark-Clow land transactions back in 2020, see The “E” is silent – as in “Clarke” for the full story. (And since that 2020 post, I’ve learned more about the Clark-Clow land deals; I hope to write about those in the future.)
   
   
2. Fun fact: I believe the directions to D. W. Maxon’s 1844 land agency in the above advertisement, “Office sixteen miles north of Milwaukie, on the [east-west] county road, one mile west of the Green Bay road, on sec 9, town 9, range 21,” puts him somewhere north of the northwest corner of present-day Highland and Wauwatosa roads in Mequon. Which, in 1844, was right in the middle of of Peter Turck’s original land patent. My guess is that Maxon arrived in the area, was offered a place to live with the Peter Turck family for a while (Turck is known to have offered such hospitality on several occasions), and got acquainted with the oldest unmarried daughter, Elizabeth Turck. Then, in April, 1846, he married 18 year old Elizabeth Turck and they moved to Cedar Creek, the village he had recently surveyed and platted out in the nearby town of Polk.
   
   
3. To be clear, these early Yankee-Yorker Mequon families were not big-time, big-money, Eastern land speculators, such as Milwaukee’s William A. Prentiss. Our Clark, Turck and Bonniwell pioneers came to settle on the low-priced government land and most stayed in the area, farming, running sawmills and other businesses, for at least a decade before selling out—often with a substantial profit—and moving onward.
   
   Members of the Densmore Maxon family lived in their historic Cedar Creek home well into the 20th century. Many members of the Bonniwell family remained in Mequon until after the Civil War, when many relocated to Hutchinson, Minnesota. Charles Bonniwell stayed the longest; he remained on his Mequon farm until the end of the 19th century.
   
   Jonathan M. Clark died in 1857. Mary Clark and her children moved to Milwaukee around 1861-1862, but they retained ownership of their Mequon property until 1872.