We’re coming up on the tenth (!) anniversary of Clark House Historian, and I realize that in those ten years I have not yet written about all of Mary (Turck) Clark’s immediate family. Regular readers will recall that the Vermont and/or Canadian ancestry of Mary’s husband Jonathan M. Clark remains, in spite of our best efforts, mysterious and—so far—mostly unknown. But we actually know a lot about Mary Clark’s people, the Peter Turck family, including her seven siblings. Over the years I’ve blogged a bit about Mary’s oldest sibling, Joseph R. Turck, and her youngest, brother Benjamin Turck. I think it’s about time I started to write about Mary Clark’s other brothers and sisters, beginning with younger sister Elizabeth Turck, later Mrs. Densmore Maxon.

Elizabeth Turck Maxon’s memoir

A memoir from the Turck family, even a short one, would be a substantial addition to what we know about the family and the events of their pioneer lives. In 1907, near the end of her long and productive life, Elizabeth Turck Maxon wrote down some of her recollections of early days in the area, in the form of a letter to the Old Settler’s Club of Washington County, Wisconsin.

When that 1907 letter was new, some—but not all—of its contents were published in various Wisconsin newspapers. In 1912, editor Carl Quickert included his selection of “the most interesting passages” from Elizabeth’s letter on pages 64-65 of his book Washington County Wisconsin Past and Present, Vol 1 (Chicago, S.J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1912).

In all the various 1907 newspaper editions, and in Quickert’s 1912 history, the omitted passages were usually noted with three asterisks, like this * * * This was typical editorial practice for the time. But, of course, those asterisks piqued my interest. What had been cut? What additional things might Elizabeth’s full text tell us about the early days in old Washington/Ozaukee county?

Old Settler’s Letter, 1907

I spent over a decade looking for Elizabeth’s unabridged, original, text and I think I finally found it. It was published on page 4 of the West Bend [WI] News of March 6, 1907. It’s a long letter, a full column of text, beginning with Elizabeth’s salutation to the members of the club, dated February 21, 1907.

The greetings are followed by the main text, beginning with her birth information and the story of the Peter Turck family’s migration from New York state to Wisconsin Territory in 1837. Below is the unabridged text (in the grey text boxes), interspersed with paragraph headers and my comments in plain type. FYI, I have blogged previously about a number of the events and characters in Elizabeth’s letter here on CHH, and have added links to some of those posts. Be sure to click the links for more information, and some interesting illustrations and maps.

Coming to Wisconsin

I was born in the village of Katskill [sic] on the Hudson river, New York state, Feb. 22, 1828. My father, Peter Turck, and his family, consisting of his wife and seven children, landed at Milwaukee bay in August, 1837. (My youngest brother, Benjamin Turck born Jan 24, 1839, 2 years after we came to Wisconsin, making the family of 8 children.)

No pier, not even a plank, projected from the shore to receive passengers. The boat anchored in the bay, and we were lowered into a yawl-boat, the men carrying the women and children from the yawl-boat to dry land. At that time Milwaukee had two dry-goods stores, one of which I remember was run by Mr. Hollister. There were only two small hotels, the Leland and the Belleview, and one small school house.

Bennet, William J. and John W. Hill, Buffalo, from Lake Erie, 1836 (detail, showing one of the many types of early 19th-century “yawl boat”). hand-colored aquatint with touches of engraving on paper, National Gallery of Art, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon. Public domain.

Mequon, mail & mills

My father took his family to Mequon, about sixteen miles north of Milwaukee, the latter place being our nearest post-office. We had no neighbors nearer than two miles, and communication by mail was expensive, the postage rate being twenty-five cents in cash paid on delivery of letter accompanied by a way bill.

My father built the first sawmill in the vicinity of his new home in 1837, and there was a great demand for lumber. The following year the country settled very rapidly. There was no gristmill at this time within reach and flour was made from corn and wheat pounded fine in a mortar by the men in the evenings. The first flour mill which bolted the flour was built, accessible to this new territory, about the year 1841, and this was at Prairieville, now the city of Waukesha.

Samuel Conover

The next paragraph, detailing Peter Turck’s adventures with hired-man, occasional rascal, and future Milwaukee county sheriff Samuel Conover, was omitted from the other published copies of Elizabeth’s letter. It adds some piquant details about Mr. Conover, and about some of the equipment and procedures employed by pioneer farmers in the 1830s and ’40s. It also clarifies that Peter Turck was a farmer on his Mequon land, as well as a sawmill operator.

Mr. Samuel Conover, afterwards sheriff of Milwaukee county, came with us in 1837 and worked for my father on his farm at Mequon during the first year. In the fall of that year he was sent to Milwaukee with an ox team to purchase provisions for the winter and while there he met and married Mrs. Powell, the widow of the captain who brought us to Milwaukee. The ox team was found in a log shed near Milwaukee where it had been left for metal more attractive. The team was afterwards found and returned to the farm minus the driver.

Schooling

Our first school teacher was my sister Mary, aged seventeen. The term opened in the summer of 1839, and the school was the attic chamber of my father’s log house. The pupils numbered four in addition to my brothers and sisters. The first schoolhouse was built in 1843 in Washington county. My sister was succeeded by the following teachers: Mrs. Taymer Boniwell [sic], 1840-41; Alfred Whitehead, 1842-43; Engene Turner, now of Port Washington, 1844-45, and Jacob Reynolds,, 1845-46.

Sketch of Elizabeth’s 1843 schoolhouse, “The Bonniwell School, ” by Evander Bonniwell. The school was located less than a mile west of the Jonathan Clark house on what is now the southeast corner of Bonniwell and Wauwatosa roads in Mequon. Image reproduced from George B. Bonniwell, The Bonniwells: 1000 Years, p. 71. (Used by permission.)

Several of Elizabeth’s teachers were—or became—members of the extended Turck and Clark families. “Taymer” Bonniwell was born Tamer Baisden in England in 1823 and married George Bonniwell (1833-1897) in Kingston, New York, in 1839. George and Tamer Bonniwell migrated to Mequon with their extended Bonniwell family via the Erie Canal and Great Lakes in 1839.

Alfred Whitehead, born in Chatham, Kent, England in 1812, married Mary Turck Clark’s sister Adama (or Adamy) Turck in Milwaukee on October 19, 1843. The Whiteheads were prominent in the development of the Methodist Church in Chicago; Alfred and Adamy (Turck) Whitehead moved there sometime between 1843 to 1850.

Densmore W. Maxon

Densmore Maxon was an early Washington/Ozaukee settler, county surveyor, land agent, mill operator and politician, and a good friend to the Clark and Turck families. I’ll have more to say about his career in several upcoming posts.

In 1846 I was married to Densmore W. Maxon and moved with an ox-team to Cedar Creek, Washington county, which place I still hold my residence although living elsewhere part of the time with my sons and daughters. My husband died in the year 1887. My neighbors at our new home in Cedar Creek were John Rix, M. Newcome, Adam Spooler, Mr. St. John, Mr. Cavender, Mr Darling, Asa Smith, D. Freer, Ethan Maxon and their respective families and Jac. Byer and Barney Clow, bachelors. These came in 1845. In 1846 came Elias Knapp, Horace Hanner John Wolfit, Adam Zepp, John C. Toll, Ezre Studley and their respective families. In two years’ time what was the forest wilderness of Cedar Creek and vicinity was as thickly colonized as at the present time. The territory between that point and Milwaukee was practically all entered from the government.

I know that paragraphs like the one above with their long lists of names can make for daunting reading. But there is often a good deal of useful information hiding in places like these. Once again this paragraph suggests that ox teams—and not horses— were the “heavy haulers” of their day for the Turcks and their neighbors. And as we learn names of the early neighbors, we can begin to investigate and draw connections between some of them. John Rix, for example, came to Wisconsin from… Stanstead, Lower Canada. There is a detailed Rix genealogy book, and the Rix family has deep connections to Stanstead, and to New England; there may, perhaps, be a Rix connection to Jonathan M. Clark’s kin (I’m still researching that).

Barney Clow was a Turck family cousin, from New York. His mother was Rachael (Gay) Turck’s sister, Comfort (Gay) Clow. I’ve written a bit about cousin Barney, but there is much more to say about his land and financial dealings with JMC while in Mequon, and his further adventures mining and ranching in California and Nevada. And Ethan Maxon would be Densmore Maxon’s father, Rev. Ethan Maxon, Jr., an important early Cedar Creek settler in his own right.

Early days in Cedar Creek

Elizabeth continued:

The first town meeting of the town of Polk was held at the residence of John Rix in 1846 and in 1847 he built the first school house, the contract price being $49.

The first school teacher was Mrs. Emiline Smith, in the year 1846-47. This school was held at the residence of Mr. Smith. The second teacher was Miss J. Maxon, afterwards Mrs. Barney Clow.

The town’s second teacher, Miss J. Maxon, was probably Hannah Jane Maxon (1828-1850), younger sister of Densmore Maxon. She married Barney Clow in, we believe, 1848. For more of her story, see our post JMC, Barney Clow and Milwaukee’s American House hotel.

Native Americans and food supplies

In theory, the area’s original Native American inhabitants, primarily the Menominee, Potawatomi and Ho-Chunk peoples, had been “cleared” from southern and central Wisconsin, including old Washington/Ozaukee county, before the start of white settlement and government surveys and land sales in the 1830s. The federal government’s “Indian removal” policies of that era, as detailed in a number of 1820s and ’30s treaties with the various tribes, had officially “extinguished the titles” of the Indians to their ancestral lands and provided the native peoples with new lands to the west of the Mississippi river. But, as Elizabeth Maxon notes, at least some of the Indians were still living, and trading with white settlers, in Washington/Ozaukee county into the 1840s and beyond.

For the first few years of our pioneer life we were bountifully supplied by the Indians with such game as venison, fish, wild turkey, geese, ducks, quails*, partridges and pigeons, who gladly exchanged them for farm products. The prices of meat in those days, as compared with the present prices, were very low. Pork in the retail at Milwaukee markets sold at 2-1/2 cents, and beef at 4 cents per pound.

Social life

Elizabeth’s next paragraph give us insights into a few aspects of frontier social life in the 1840s. We also learn the name of old Washington county’s best fiddler and dancing master.

There has always been rivalry between the east and west side of Milwaukee. I remember that on Feb. 21, 1844 I attended a dance on the west side; the river running north and south divided the village. Mr. Topliff of Washington county played the violin and as a dancing master he had no equal. Men were plentiful but the total number of ladies that could be mustered was eighteen. No lady from the east side attended and from that day to the present time there has been more or less social emulation between the two sections in the city.

Winslow Homer, “The Dance After Husking” 1858 (Minneapolis Institute of Art)

In closing

While pioneer life had its drawbacks and privations, it had many advantages over the strenuous life of modern competition. If modem conveniences could go hand in hand with the ease, freedom and health of pioneer life, there could be no more ideal existence.

With kindest regards, believe me,
Sincerely yours,
ELISABETH MAXON

A source question: Elisabeth or Elizabeth?

Whether there is more in the original handwritten letter, we don’t yet know. Is that letter in the archives of the Washington County Old Settler’s Club? And if so, where are those archives now? For the moment, this is the most complete version of the text that I can find, and it serves as an important addition to the story of the Turck and Maxon families, and the early days of white settlement in old Washington/Ozaukee county.

And for the record, how did Mrs. Densmore Maxon (neé Turck) spell her given name? All other sources that I have seen, and most of them are secondary sources, spell her first name with an Z, “Elizabeth.” But this important source, based—we presume—on a manuscript letter that she wrote and signed, closes with Elisabeth, with an S. Which is it? I’m not sure, but now I have to go back through my files and see what I can find. At the moment, my opinion is that Elizabeth is her preferred spelling, but I’ll let you know when I find more.

More to come

That’s all for now. I’ll be back with more Clark House history in just a bit.

Any questions? comments? suggestions? Please let me know.

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UPDATED, Monday afternoon, February 2, 2026, to correct a layout and pop-up issue with the Winslow Homer illustration and to add a clarifying sentence to the “Source question” paragraph.