Author: Clark House Historian Reed Perkins.

Clark House News: Summer Hours & more!

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

More Clark House news has arrived from our executive director, Dana Hansen. Starting this month—May, 2022—the Jonathan Clark House Museum, at the corner of Bonniwell and Cedarburg Roads in Mequon, Wisconsin, will be open for tours on the first Friday and second Saturday of each month, from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.

If I read my calendar correctly, that means you can just drop in this Friday, May 6, or next Saturday, May 14, between 11 and 2, and enjoy a tour of the historic home of Mequon’s pioneer Clark family. Other open days will follow on first Fridays and second Saturdays throughout the summer. If you have a group of 6 or more, please call ahead. More info on Clark House tours can be found at this link. Questions? Give us a call at 262-618-2051 or send us an e-mail at jchmuseum@gmail.com.

History Mystery! update…

Did you see our CHH History Mystery! post on Monday? Have you been working on your transcription of our early English manuscript text? Are you stumped? Do you still want to win eternal fame and glory throughout the Clark House Historian readership? Here’s an update to that initial post, with two more clues to help you solve our handwriting puzzle:

Continue reading →

Help the Historian! – a manuscript “History Mystery”

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 4 Comments

I’ve been reading a lot of interesting documents lately, including some very cool and very old Clark House related manuscripts. (More details on these exciting documents coming later this spring or early summer.) We’ve looked at many old manuscripts here at Clark House Historian, and I think I’m pretty good at deciphering most older English handwriting from about 1700 until the present and, with help, I can even figure out many German scripts from the late 18th- through the 19th-century.

But then there’s this, a real Clark House Historian History Mystery:

That’s the handwriting of a literate English-speaking man or woman of a certain era. I’ve seen handwriting like this before in old Cornwall parish records of my Perkins family. In my (limited) experience I’ve seen this style of writing on documents dating from the later-1600s through the early 1700s, perhaps as late as 1750 or so. But I’m not an expert on Early Modern English or English orthography, and it’s possible that this hand was in use as early as the 1500s. It may (or may not) be a variation on the English writing style known as Secretary hand.

For some reason, this writing style remains very difficult for me to read. I’ve spent enough time with examples of this hand—and the many spelling conventions of the era—that I’m not completely lost, but there is a lot here that I don’t understand. So I’m asking you readers to take a crack at it, and Help the Historian! with this mysterious passage.

Along the way, I recommend you click on each image to open it in a new, larger window. You’ll get the best, enlargeable, view of each mystery text and my annotations. Here are your clues:

Continue reading →

Alfred Bonniwell documents – part 7: landowner, 1845

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

When the extended Bonniwell family arrived in Wisconsin Territory in May, 1839, youngest son Alfred T. Bonniwell was not quite two months past his 13th birthday, and his brother Walter was only two years older. Because of their youth, neither Alfred nor Walter were able join their mother and brothers as they purchased government land and established what became known as Mequon’s Bonniwell Settlement.1

That changed for Alfred on June 7, 1845, when his mother, Eleanor (Hills Bonniwell) Hyde, gave him the eastern 80 acres of her original federal land patent.

Hyde, Eleanor (grantor) to A. T. Bonniwell (grantee), deed for 80 acres, June 7, 1845. See note 2 for source and details. Click to open larger image in new window.

Alfred would buy and sell several other properties in the 1850s and ’60s, but he held on to this parcel until his death, fifty years later. Let’s see what he got…

Continue reading →

JCH News: Play Ball!

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 3 Comments

I just got some fun news from Jonathan Clark House executive director Dana Hansen:

While the weather doesn’t feel like it at the moment, our fundraiser game with the Chinooks is coming up very soon! Make sure to purchase your packages asap for the game on June 3rd as they will be opening up general ticket sales May 2nd, and expect to sell out. See the poster below for more information, and hope to see you out at the ball game!

______________________________________

Click to open larger image in a new window.

Batter up! for history.

So if you’d like to support the Clark House—and enjoy an fun evening at the ballpark—call and reserve your game package for Friday, June 3rd, 2022, and don’t forget promo code JCH.

And even though the Chinooks and the Rafters will play by modern rules, I’m sure Old Abe would approve…

Continue reading →

Alfred Bonniwell documents – part 6: U.S. Citizen, 1849

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

Today’s post in our Bonniwell document series1 focuses on one important item, Alfred T. Bonniwell’s Petition for Naturalization as a United States citizen, completed in Milwaukee, at the U.S. District Court for the District of Wisconsin, November 6, 1849.

Bonniwell, Alfred, Petition for Naturalization 6 Nov 1849; for full citation see note 2, below. Click to open larger image in new window.

This petition was the final step in a relatively simple citizenship process whose basic outlines had not changed much since the early days of the republic. Alfred T. Bonniwell’s 1849 citizenship petition follows a form typical of such documents, but has a few extra bits of information that are particular to his immigration story. Let’s take a closer look.

Continue reading →

Alfred Bonniwell documents – part 5: Wisconsin, 1846-1847

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 3 Comments

Continuing our look at the life of Alfred Bonniwell, today’s post focuses on two documents, the Wisconsin territorial censuses of 1846 and 1847. We’ll take a close look at the Bonniwell families as enumerated on the Wisconsin territorial census of 1846, and discuss briefly the status of the 1847 census schedules for old Washington/Ozaukee county.1

The Wisconsin Territorial census of 1846:

The next Wisconsin territorial census after 1842 was officially enumerated on June 1, 1846. The record of Mequon’s various Bonniwell families begins on the third line of page 43 of the Washington county schedules:

For full citation, see note 2, below; image lightly tinted. Click to open larger image in new window.

For our purposes today, the key “heads of families” and their households begin on line 3. They are the households of:

• W. T. Bonniwell . . . . .  2 males, 4 females
• Eleanor Hyde. . . . . . . .3 males, 2 females
• C Bonniwell. . . . . . . . . 3 males, 5 females
• P. Moss. . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 male, 1 female
• J. Bonniwell. . . . . . . . . 5 males, 4 females
• G. Bonniwell. . . . . . . . 2 males, 3 females
• H. Bonniwell. . . . . . . . 1 male, 3 females

We see that by mid-1846 there were seven Bonniwell family households in Mequon’s “Bonniwell Settlement.” Five were headed by Bonniwell sons: William T., Charles, James, George and Henry, and another by Bonniwell brother-in-law Philip Moss. And Matriarch Eleanor (Hills Bonniwell) Hyde still led her own substantial household.

Who’s who in 1846?

As we noted in our discussion of the 1842 territorial census, identifying “who’s who?” in each family takes some guesswork, and the identifications are never 100% certain. But let’s try and make some educated guesses about who is living with whom in each of the 1846 Bonniwell family households. Let’s start with the families of the Bonniwell sons:

Continue reading →

Monday: Map Day – Ukraine

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

UPDATED, April 9, 2022 to fix a minor typo and two unclear phrases.

I haven’t published much here in the last month or so. My apologies. There were some unavoidable but relatively harmless distractions involved, the sort of things that we all deal with from time to time. But the ongoing slaughter in Ukraine, unprovoked, inhuman and inexcusable, made writing and blogging…impossible.

But now it seems even more impossible to not write about the largest conflict in Europe since the end of the Second World War. So today’s “Monday: Map Day” will be devoted to some basic information about Ukraine: its location in Europe, its main cities and geographic features, and a few facts about the country, at least as it was prior to the Russian invasion.1

Maps

This map2 was downloaded on April 3, 2022, and shows the borders of Ukraine as understood by the United States and most of nations of the world, and includes all the portions of Crimea, Donbass and Luhansk that Russia seized at the start of the Russo-Ukrainian War in 2014.

Not quite sure where we are? Here’s a map showing Ukraine’s location in eastern Europe:

Continue reading →

Alfred Bonniwell documents – part 4: Wisconsin territorial census, 1842

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

Continuing on with our series of Alfred Bonniwell documents, today’s post looks at one of two censuses that (probably) record Alfred Bonniwell in Wisconsin Territory between the federal decennial censuses of 1840 and 1850. If you need to catch up, our previous installments are here, here, here, here and here.
UPDATED May 22, 2022, to correct Charles Bonniwell, Sr.’s birth year to 1806

The Wisconsin territorial census of 1842

For background on the 1842 Wisconsin territorial census, its enumeration in old Washington/Ozaukee county, and its relation to the Clark, Turck and Bonniwell families and their neighbors, you’ll want to read Census Records for the In-Between Years: 1842.1

The official enumeration date for this census was June 1, 1842; the enumeration of old Washington county—still attached to Milwaukee County for legal purposes—was done by Levi Ostrander and officially completed on July 1, 1842. Here’s page 65 of that census. The extended Bonniwell family—and some of their notable neighbors—are circled in red.2

Full source details in note 2, below. Click to open larger image in new window.

Let’s take a closer look at each of these families and try and understand which Bonniwells were living where, in Mequon, in mid-summer, 1842…

Continue reading →

Organizing…

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins.

It’s been a week of constant organizing at my house. A useful and productive week, perhaps, spent sorting, reading, and filing paperwork, and updating the household accounts. But not much writing.

Of course, the need to sort, repair and organize is not limited to our era. I suspect the Clarks, Turcks, Bonniwells—and their neighbors—spent a good bit of time trying to catch up with their 19th-century chores, like this fellow…

Guy, Seymour Joseph (1824–1910), Utilizing a Spare Moment, oil on canvas, c. 1860-1870. Yale University Art Gallery, public domain (CC0 1.0). Click to open larger image in new window.

Continue reading →