I just put the final edits on my upcoming presentation for the Fall Meeting of the Wisconsin Society, Daughters of the American Revolution. I’ll be talking about Wisconsin’s first federal road—the Old Military Road—and the men that built it, including our own Jonathan M. Clark.

One of my WSDAR presentation slides. From left: JMC’s army post, Fort Howard (Green Bay), JMC’s army enlistment paper, JMC portrait photo.

My talk is scheduled to run for 30 minutes and, as is often the case, I had to cut a lot of information from the presentation in order to keep it inside the time limit. But I don’t want all of those research tidbits to go to waste, so I’m going to post them in a few posts here on the blog. Today, I’m going to list, comment on, and link to some of the key sources that helped me put my WSDAR presentation together. If you have any interest in Wisconsin’s early roads and related transportation issues, I encourage you to check out these sources. Most are freely available online, and I’ll provide links where I can. Happy reading!

Durbin & Durbin, 1984

To my knowledge, the best, most detailed, and most comprehensively researched and documented article about the Military Road remains “Wisconsin’s Military Road: Its Genesis and Construction” by Richard D. Durbin and Elizabeth Durbin. It was published in Wisconsin Magazine of History (WMH), Vol. 68, No. 1, Fall, 1984.

The Durbins appear to have consulted a huge number of primary sources, especially the deep collections of the Wisconsin Historical Society (WHS) and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Their article is lavishly illustrated with vintage and modern maps, and will allow the reader to retrace the path of the original Military Road through modern Wisconsin. The authors also document in great detail the many twists and turns of the road’s legislative and appropriations history and the military’s involvement in the project.

Durbin and Durbin is essential reading for this subject, and can be read for free via the Wisconsin Magazine of History Archives at WHS’s excellent website (link to article). And speaking of the Wisconsin Magazine of History…

H. E. Cole, 1925

The military road was the subject of an earlier article in the same journal, H.E. [Harry Ellsworth] Cole’s “The Old Military Road,” published in WMH Vol. 9, No. 21, September, 1925. As might be expected, the author’s prose is, at times, a bit dated in style, but his research appears to have been carefully done and remains solid. The article has only one illustration, a sketch map of the route of the Military Road as built. There are very few citations to sources.

Cole’s essay lacks the in-depth dig into primary sources that is a feature of the Durbins’ 1984 article. But his article casts a wider net over the full history of the Old Military Road, and includes many interesting tales and anecdotes of the road and the people that traveled upon it during its existence.

Cole’s article is an easy read, and highly recommended. It can also be read for free via the Wisconsin Magazine of History Archives at this link to article.

H. E. Cole, 1930

Much of Cole’s 1925 article reappeared as Chapter 2 of a book-length collection of his writings, Stagecoach and Tavern Tales of the Old Northwest, edited by Louise Phelps Kellogg and published in Cleveland in 1930.

A glance at the table of contents gives a sense of the breadth and depth of Cole’s road and tavern related stories. I have only skimmed some of the chapters, and my impression is that “Stagecoach and Tavern Tales” remains a good read, filled with a lot of information about the “nuts & bolts” of road construction and travel in the early days of Wisconsin Territory and State.

Recommended for getting a first overview of these topics before doing further research, or for casual reading. You can find it at Ancestry.com (subscription required) as “Stagecoach and tavern tales of the Old Northwest [database on-line]. Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2005,” which is part of Ancestry’s collection of “Stories, Memories and Histories.” A free, higher-resolution copy of the book can be read and downloaded at Archive.org (book link here).

Karn, 1959

Not all useful sources get published as journal articles or books. There is a lot of useful information hidden away in theses written for master’s and doctoral degrees. These often represent years of valuable research, reading and work with primary sources by their authors. In past years, the author might make a few copies of their thesis: one for their supervising academic department, one for their university library, and one or more for themselves. The library copy would be duly bound, indexed and shelved in a dusty corner of the library and rarely consulted afterwards. But now, many of these theses and dissertations have been scanned and put online. And one of those, from the University of Wisconsin’s online collection, turned out to be useful for my presentation.

This is a University of Wisconsin master’s thesis from 1959, titled “Roadmaking in Wisconsin Territory,” by Edwin Daniel Karn. I found the first several chapters quite useful, and if you are curious about the topic, you may find the whole paper to be of interest. I was able to access and download the paper at UW’s “Minds” website at this address.

Vintage Research in the Internet Age

I’ll confess: when I prepared my WSDAR presentation, I did not do the kind of months-long “review of the literature” typically expected for a PhD thesis, but I did try and locate the essential sources and avoid replicating their work. Along the way, I may have missed some more recent publications.

But as far as I can tell, Durbin and Durbin’s 1984 article, while now 40 years old, remains the most detailed and accurate overview of the “genesis and construction” of the military road. And the writings of Cole and Karn fill us in with more details of how the road was made, and used, during the early days of the territory and state. Each of these authors were writing for different audiences—some more casual, some more academic—in different eras. I believe this “old” information remains, for the most part, a solid base on which to build an understanding of the Old Military Road, the men who built it (including Jonathan M. Clark), and the people that used it.

But that’s not all…

I had no interest in making a “cut & paste” presentation based on secondary sources and summarizing previous research. I wanted my presentation to uncover some fresh information and reveal some new insights into the story of the Old Military Road. And over the years I have found some great primary source materials that played a key role in my WSDAR talk. These included several databases at Ancestry.com and Fold3.com (subscription required for both), as well as digitized historic newspapers from several other sites (to be discussed in another post).

Among my most productive databases for this project were several that involve reports and correspondence from the officers commanding JMC’s 5th Regiment of Infantry—and their garrisons at Fort Howard and Fort Winnebago—and the 1st Infantry headquarters at Fort Crawford to the U.S. Army’s chief bureaucrat in Washington, the Adjutant General. The reports and correspondence received by the Adjutant General have been microfilmed and digitized and can be found at these databases:

Ancestry.com. U.S., Returns from Regular Army Infantry Regiments, 1821-1916 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011. Original data: Returns from Regular Army Infantry Regiments, June 1821–December 1916; Microfilm publication M665, rolls 1–244, 262-292, 297–300 of 300; NAID: 300381; Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, 1780’s–1917, Record Group 94, and Records of United States Regular Army Mobile Units, 1821–1942, Record Group 391; The National Archives in Washington, DC.

Most of my interest were for the returns from the Fifth Infantry during the 1830s. The regiment’s monthly report was signed by the regiment’s commander; from 1834, that commander was Brevet Brigadier General George M. Brooke.

Brooke’s regimental returns covered all the 5th regiment’s activities at posts in Chicago (Fort Dearborn, companies A and B), Green Bay (Fort Howard, companies G, H, I and Jonathan Clark’s company K) and the Portage (Fort Winnebago, companies C, D, E, F). I’ve discussed these reports elsewhere (here and here, among others); see those posts for more details.

In addition to the monthly Returns from Regular Army Infantry Regiments, the various commanders at each post filled out a similar, slightly less-detailed monthly report. These were called:

Ancestry.com. U.S., Returns from Military Posts, 1806-1916 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2009. Original data: Returns From U.S. Military Posts, 1800-1916; Microfilm Publication M617, 1550 rolls; NAID: 561324; Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, 1762 – 1984, Record Group 94; The National Archives in Washington, D.C.

For my purposes, I searched this database for returns from Forts Howard, Winnebago and Crawford, from the late-1820s through about 1840. General Brooke commanded the regiment from his post at Fort Howard, so he is the author of the Returns from Military Posts for that fort from 1834 until his regimental headquarters moved west in 1837. Various 5th regiment officers commanded Fort Winnebago during the same period. One of these was Capt. Nathan Clark (no relation, see this post).

But especially interesting are the letters from the commanders of the Wisconsin forts back to the Adjutant General at army headquarters in Washington, D.C. These are available from another subscription website, Fold3.com in their database titled:

Fold3.com. Letters Received by the Office of the Adjutant General Main Series, 1822-1860, these are unbound letters, with their enclosures, received by the Adjutant General during the period 1822-60. They are part of Record Group 94, Records of the Adjutant General’s Office. The images in this title were digitized from 636 rolls of the NARA microfilm publication M567. Contents of each roll, as well as a list of consolidated files and files with enclosures, are provided at the end of the descriptive pamphlet for M567.

These letters give fascinating insights into the daily lives lived, and challenges faced, by our road-building soldiers in the Wisconsin Territory. I have spent many profitable hours reading the letters to the Adjutant General from General Brooke, at regimental headquarters, and from his subordinates, commanding Forts Winnebago and Dearborn, particularly Martin Scott, Nathan Clark and Randolph B. Marcy.

I have many insights from these documents queued up and waiting to be blogged about. Lots of “you are there” insights into JMC’s life as a soldier in the U.S. Army, 1833-1836.

Thanks for reading. I’ll be back soon with more Clark House History.