Author: Clark House Historian Reed Perkins.

“Distressing sickness” – 1811, Lower Canada, edition

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

Among the unavoidable trials of life in the 1800s were the recurring waves of infectious diseases that frequently troubled cities, towns, and rural settlements. These epidemics and pandemics were made even more disturbing due to the general scientific ignorance of the times.

And although inoculation for the prevention of smallpox1 was practiced in Europe and North America at various times during the eighteenth century, the concept of “germ theory” would not gain widespread acceptance until the second half of the nineteenth century, and routine vaccination to prevent common illnesses would not be in general use until the decades after World War II. Disease was an omnipresent part of life in early America.

Fever ravages Stanstead

In the winter of 1811, a particularly virulent outbreak occurred in the vicinity of Stanstead, Lower Canada, as reported on page 3 of the Bridgeport, Connecticut, Republican Farmer of Wednesday, February 27, 1811:

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Leaders and Associates – the unique land grant system of early Lower Canada

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

Last time, we continued our search for possible kin of Jonathan M. Clark in Lower Canada by looking at a map found in the Lower Canada land petition archives. Please take a moment to peruse that post and look at the manuscript map of Stanstead Township, Lower Canada from the very early 1800s.

That map was contained in the land petition file of one of Stanstead’s earliest and largest landowners, Isaac Ogden. The Lower Canada Land Petition archives are a tremendous resource for studying the early settlement of the province, but the files are often very large. And, for those of us accustomed to the system of federal land patents used in the United States, the Lower Canada land petition and land grant system is sufficiently different that it may be hard to understand and navigate.

Today’s post will focus on one element of that system in particular, the unique, and often corrupt land petition practice known as the system of township leaders and associates. It has a complicated history, so rather than paraphrasing, let me quote at length from the official provincial report that I discussed in an earlier post, the List of lands granted by the crown in the province of Quebec, from 1763 to 31st December 1890, printed by order of the Quebec Legislature by C.-F. Langlois, Printer to Her Most Excellent Majesty the Queen, Quebec, 1891, beginning on page 7:

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Monday: Map Day! – A very early map of Stanstead, LC, landowners

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

Sorry for the late post. So much information, so little time to organize and interpret…

I’m back on the hunt for Jonathan M. Clark’s possible kin in Stanstead Township, and in the process also trying to master the land grant system, documents, and archives of Lower Canada in the early 1800s. For background to our search, you may want to read (or at least skim through) these posts:

It’s complicated, I don’t yet have a full grasp of the details, but I didn’t want Monday to pass without a new map to help guide us on our way. Today’s example may not seem like much at first glance, but it’s really quite special:

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Veterans Day, 2020

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 3 Comments

This is a revised, updated, and expanded version of a post originally published at Clark House Historian on November 11, 2016.

One hundred and two years ago, on the eleventh day, of the eleventh month, at the eleventh hour—Paris time—the Armistice of Compiègne took effect, officially ending the fighting on the Western Front and marking the end of the optimistically named “War to End All Wars.”

In the United States, the commemoration of the war dead and the Allied victory began as Armistice Day in 1919, by proclamation of President Woodrow Wilson. Congress created Armistice Day as a legal holiday in 1938. Starting in 1945, a World War II veteran named Raymond Weeks proposed that the commemorations of November 11 be expanded to celebrate all veterans, living and dead. In 1954 Congress and President Eisenhower made that idea official, and this is what we commemorate today. There are many veterans with a connection to the Jonathan Clark house. We honor a few of them in this post.

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Monday: Map Day! – Peter and Rachael (Gay) Turck’s New York, 1829/32

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 9 Comments

I’m working with one of our young Clark House Museum volunteers to examine the life of early Mequon settler Peter Turck and his large family. Peter Turck was a man of many talents and trades, which we will look into in more depth in future posts. He was also Mary (Turck) Clark’s father and Jonathan M. Clark’s father-in-law.1

The Turk/Turck family is an old Dutch-American family that first came to the New World in the 1660s, settling on the island of Manhattan, then known as New Amsterdam, part of the Dutch colony of New Netherland. The Turk/Turck family maintained a presence in Manhattan well into the twentieth-century.2 Some Turk/Turck descendants migrated to the Hudson River valley in the 1700s and stayed for many generations.

For our purposes, I thought it would be useful to have a map that gave an overview of the places that Peter Turck and Rachael Gay lived before coming to Wisconsin Territory in 1837:

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Early Election Returns!

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

While we’re all waiting for this year’s votes to be counted, here’s a revised and updated repeat of a post that first appeared here on November 8, 2016.

Really early returns, from Mequon’s—and Washington County’s— first election, 1840.

In an earlier post, I outlined some of the key moments in the settlement and changing political boundaries of early Washington/Ozaukee county. Originally attached to Milwaukee County for all civil and judicial matters, old Washington County got its civil independence by act of the Territorial Legislature on February 19, 1840. And on “the second Monday of October next,” i.e., October 12, 1840, the first election to chose county officers was held at the Mequon home of Taylor Heavilon.1, 2

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Election Day, 2020

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins.

or, How to Preserve Our Constitutional Republic

A guide for the perplexed…

  • Today is Election Day
  • Every voter should have free, fair, safe, convenient access to the polls
  • If you haven’t done so already, go vote
  • After the polls close, count all the votes
  • This may take time
  • In some locations, this may take days
  • We are adults, we can wait

Follow these steps and you—yes, you—will help preserve, protect, and defend our constitution and representative government, and also prevent embarrassing and potentially de-stabilizing nonsense like this:

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Monday: Map Day! – Lower Canada ranges and lots

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

Finding our way on Bouchette’s 1815 Topographical Map…

Last Monday—as part of our ongoing search for Jonathan M. Clark’s roots in northern Vermont and Lower Canada—we introduced Joseph Bouchette’s huge and minutely detailed Topographical map of the Province of Lower Canada, published in London in 1815. Today’s post picks up where we left off last week, so if you missed that introduction, I recommend you click here and read it first.

For easy reference, here’s the complete, original map again:

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