Mary Turck Clark

Wisconsin Wages, 1850

/ Genealogist & Historian Reed Perkins. / Leave a comment

Our most recent post, Labor Day – a photo essay, got me thinking about work and wages during Jonathan and Mary (Turck) Clark’s years in Mequon. For some time now, I’ve been trying to get a sense of where Jonathan and Mary got their money and how they spent, saved, and invested it during Wisconsin’s first decades as a territory and state. Consider this as the first post of several that will try and answer some of those questions.

Labor, wages & the Clarks, c. 1850

Back in 2019 we took a close look at the Clark family’s information as enumerated on the 1850 U.S. federal census population schedules. If you missed that series, or want to refresh your memory, here are some links: part 1, part 2, part 3. And in part 4 of that series, we noted that the Clark household included a “Laborer,” a 30 year-old immigrant from Germany named John Buck:

The Clarks were also able to hire an extra hand for the farm, John Buck. This must have been an essential expenditure, otherwise Jonathan—and the 16-year-old Arthur Clark—would have been the only adult males to work the Clark farm’s 160 acres. And Mary Clark had her hands full, raising five children of her own, feeding and clothing a household of eight, and attending to her full complement of exhausting daily domestic and farm chores.

So, how much did the Clarks have to pay John Buck for his labor? We don’t have any financial records from the Clarks’ household, but we do have some relevant information from this book:

The Statistical view of the United States…being a compendium of the seventh census, compiled by J. D. B. DeBow, superintendent of the U.S. Census, published in Washington, DC, 1854, pages 164-165.

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Labor Day – a photo essay

/ Genealogist & Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

Monday, September 7th, is Labor Day, the holiday celebrating the working men and women of our nation, and I thought I’d commemorate the day with a lightly-revised re-post of our annual CHH Labor Day piece that first appeared in 2023. To honor the holiday and salute the American worker, past and present, let’s revisit some of the nineteenth-century occupations we’ve talked about previously at Clark Heritage & History, highlighting a few of the many skills, trades, and occupations common during the Clark House era.

Since it is a holiday, I’m not going to add long commentaries to each image. Enjoy the image galleries, and be sure to click each gallery—and photo—to open larger versions of each. And click the highlighted links to visit the original CHH posts for each topic; they are filled with more images and lots of information about the different skills, tools, and jobs of the Clark family era, and include full image credits.

“Labor”

What’s the first thing you think of when you hear the word labor? Perhaps big men doing hard work with their hands, at a factory, on a job site, or in a workshop? In its early decades—except for the first sawmills, grist mills, stone quarries (and a brewery or two)—rural Mequon didn’t have much in the way of factory work. (Fun fact: Jonathan Clark’s father-in-law Peter Turck set up the first business in the county, a sawmill on Pigeon Creek, in 1838. See the essay on Peter Turck by Clark House young historian Spencer Holloway on pages 4-5 of the Jonathan Clark House April, 2021, newsletter for more.)

Pioneer Mequon did have plenty of men that knew how to use tools to make, improve, or repair all sorts of things. Notably, the Bonniwell family was filled with skilled carpenters, shipbuilders and other tradesmen, and Jonathan Clark and many of his Mequon neighbors had experience surveying, cutting out roads, and building simple bridges and dams. Some of those Clark-era trades and tools are shown in these photos of 1840s-1860s workers and their tools:

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Back to School, 1839!

/ Genealogist & Historian Reed Perkins. / Leave a comment

Once again, summer has flown past, even faster than before, with only a few CHH posts to show for it. Sorry about that. I my defense, I have been busy—with gardening, assorted family business, and a good deal of Clark Heritage & History research and public presentations—but I haven’t found time for much blogging. (And in case you’re wondering: it has been a very good year in our garden for tomatoes (5 heirloom varieties), patty-pan squash, rhubarb, basil, giant sunflowers and our first-ever garlic crop (3 varieties!), an okay year for cucumbers, but a surprisingly weak year for our usually hyper-productive bush green beans. Go figure.)

Anyway, now that summer activities are ending and the garden is slowing down, I mean to return to regular CHH blogging. I have lots of partially finished posts waiting for completion, and a long queue of Clark-era documents that need transcription, interpretation, and shaping into coherent posts. Thank you for your patience during this long, quiet, CHH blog summer. Looking ahead, we’ll have lots more early-Wisconsin history coming soon to CHH, so stay tuned. In the meanwhile, I hope you enjoy this lightly-revised reprise of our “Back to School, 1839!” post from September 9, 2020.

Currier & Ives. God Bless Our School. United States, ca. 1874. New York: Published by Currier & Ives, 125 Nassau St.

Currier & Ives. God Bless Our School. United States, ca. 1874. New York: Published by Currier & Ives, 125 Nassau St. Library of Congress. This image first appeared on Clark House Historian as part of our 2021 post Caroline M. Clark’s classroom & curricula, 1858-1860

Daniel Strickland hires “the first teacher“

There are a number of conflicting claims to the title of “first teacher” in Mequon. One of the first was Mary Turck Clark. She led classes for her siblings and four neighbor children in the loft of her father’s cabin in the summer of 1839.

The History of Washington and Ozaukee Counties, relates a number of other “firsts” for area schools and teachers. Among them is this story of how the school committee,1 led by Daniel Strickland (father of Sarah A. Strickland Clark), hired its first teacher.

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Memorial Day, 2026

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Lest We Forget

Our annual Memorial Day post, first published in 2020, more relevant with each passing year.

Graves of Unknown Union Soldiers, Memphis National Cemetery, photo by Clayton B. Fraser, (Library of Congress), public domain. Memphis National Cemetery is the final resting place of Mequon’s Watson Peter Woodworth, and almost 14,000 of his Union Army comrades.

Today is the day our nation officially observes Memorial Day. For many Americans, Memorial Day represents “the first day of summer,” and is traditionally celebrated with trips to the lake, picnics, parades, and sales on cars, appliances, and other consumer goods.

But for many of us, Memorial Day remains rooted in its origins as Decoration Day. The first national observance was in 1868, when retired general John A. Logan, commander and chief of the Grand Army of the Republic—the Union veterans’ organization—issued his General Order Number 11, designating May 30 as a memorial day “for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land.”

On this Memorial Day, let’s take a moment to remember what this day truly represents.

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Jonathan and Mary Clark’s first home

/ Genealogist & Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

Home Sweet Home., ca. 1876. [New York: publisher not transcribed]. Library of Congress.

One of the first and most important tasks for any settlers arriving in the recently “opened-for-settlement” Wisconsin Territory was to create some sort of dwelling to shelter themselves as they carved out new farmsteads amid the dense hardwood forests. But what sort of quickly-built structures did our immigrants first construct and take shelter in?

Obviously, the big, stone, full-basement, two-story, Greek Revival style Jonathan Clark House, with its “1848” inscription carved over the front door, and its many double-hung sash windows, was not a hastily-made “first shelter” for newlyweds Jonathan and Mary (Turck) Clark. They must have had another, smaller, first home. What was that first home like? Until now we have assumed that the Clarks’ first home was probably a log cabin, and not some kind of “shanty,” but we didn’t really know. In today’s post, we share with you a recently discovered document that—I believe—solves this mystery once and for all…

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Meet Mary’s sister: Elizabeth Turck Maxon (1828-1913)

/ Genealogist & Historian Reed Perkins. / 4 Comments

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.

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“Intensely Cold Weather”

/ Genealogist & Historian Reed Perkins. / 4 Comments

We’re having some very cold weather this weekend, not unusual for Wisconsin in mid-winter. But it got me thinking, wondering what sort of winter weather did the Clarks and Turcks and Bonniwells experience, and what effect the did the cold have on their daily lives?

To find out, I started by searching digitized old newspapers, looking for the phrase “below zero,” in Wisconsin, between the years 1833-1899. Oh boy, did I get results! After narrowing my search to more local sources, I found this news item on page 2 of the Wednesday, January 2, 1884 issue of the Cedarburg News:

This article suggests that the winter of 1883-1884 was expected to be somewhat mild; an “open” winter was one with little or no snow cover on the ground. All the signs and predictions thought this would be the case. Apparently, the local muskrats had built their houses differently in 1883, as muskrats do when they expect a milder winter. The “universal opinion” of the “local weather prophets”—including Milwaukee’s famed “Ice Bear,” Henry Kroeger—thought so, too. But on the night of December 28-29, 1883, the thermometers in Cedarburg—just a few miles from the old Jonathan Clark farm—dropped to 25 degrees below zero (Farenheit). It was the coldest morning in decades.

But by the 1880s many of the older members of the Clark, Turck, and Bonniwell families had died, and many of the younger generation had left Ozaukee county and relocated to Milwaukee, Chicago, Minnesota, and elsewhere. Some or most of them may have missed this late-1883 cold snap. But this short article also mentions another, similar record cold spell, one that Mary Turck Clark and her children actually lived through, in Milwaukee, around the New Year of 1864.

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Home to Thanksgiving

/ Genealogist & Historian Reed Perkins. / Leave a comment

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. To celebrate the holiday, I thought I’d reprint a lightly revised version of our now-annual CHH Thanksgiving post, to share with you a few vintage recipes and a nice Currier & Ives lithograph from the period.1

Thanksgiving, 1867

Durrie, George H. and John Schutler, Home to Thanksgiving, ca. 1867, New York, Currier & Ives. National Gallery of Art, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon. Public Domain. Click to to open larger image in a new window.

By 1867, when this sentimental lithograph was first published, the Clark family had been living in the City of Milwaukee’s seventh ward for about six years. Family patriarch Jonathan M. Clark had died a decade earlier, and his only son, Henry M. Clark, had been gone for about a year and a half. Family matriarch Mary (Turck) Clark was living in a house in Milwaukee with her unmarried daughters, Libbie, Persie, Theresa, Laura, Josie and Jennie.

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The American Revolution: are you watching?

/ Genealogist & Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

The American War of Independence began 250 years ago, more than half a century before the forced removal of Wisconsin’s original native peoples and the beginnings of large-scale, government-sponsored, white settlement in the Wisconsin Territory of the 1830s.

Verger, Jean Baptiste Antoine De, artist, [Soldiers in Uniform], 1781 (detail). The soldier on the right was a New England militiaman, one of many New Englanders (including, we believe, Jonathan Clark’s kin) that fought for the Patriot cause. More on this image, below.

PBS is commemorating the big anniversary by sponsoring and broadcasting “The American Revolution,” a six-part, 12-hour documentary film by Ken Burns and company, exploring the roots of the conflict, the military and diplomatic progress of the war, and the contributions to, and effects of, the war on its many military and civilian participants, including white, Black, and Native American men and women, both Loyalists & Patriots.

I’ve seen the first four episodes and found them lively, interesting, informative, and sometimes deeply moving. I’m no expert on the Revolutionary era, but I know quite a bit, and I find the series includes all the “important” events and persons that one would expect, along with all kinds of nuance and detail which are new to me.

It’s an excellent documentary, well worth your time, and is currently streaming—for free—on PBS.org. And in case you are wondering: yes, there are many topics in this Revolutionary War documentary that connect to, and later influence, the lives many of the early Mequon settler families, including the Clark and Turck families. In particular, be sure to watch the whole first episode, a clear and detailed explanation of the complex background and causes of the fight for American independence.

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Veterans Day, 2025

/ Genealogist & Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

Veterans Day is today. For a perspective on the day—and our early Mequon veterans—here’s a post originally published at Clark House Historian on November 11, 2016, and revised, expanded and republished several times since.

Armistice Day — Veterans Day

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

In the United States, the commemoration of the war dead and the Allied victory began in 1919 as Armistice Day, 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.

114th Regimental Reunion, May 30, 1897, Norwich, N. Y., Library of Congress [cropped and adjusted]. Many Clark neighbors served during the Civil War, and many remained active in the Grand Army of the Republic, the national organization for Union Army veterans, including these men from rural New York, gathered together in 1897.

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