Mary Turck Clark

It’s our Blog Birthday!

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

Clark House Historian is 5 years old today!!

Jonathan Clark House, Mequon, Wisconsin, July, 2015. Photograph by Reed Perkins. Click to open larger image in new window.

Our very first post, announcing the new blog, went live on March 29, 2016. The information in that post has now been revised and expanded into the About and Disclaimers sections of the blog.

The first posts with historical content followed in April, 2016. I still link to one of those posts—Where are we?—when I need to explain the evolving place names and political geography of the Mequon area.

Since the first Clark House Historian posts in 2016 we have learned a lot more about the Clark house, its occupants and their families, friends and neighbors. If you’re new to the blog—or the Jonathan M. Clark House—here are some good places to begin reading (and be sure to click the links in each article):

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“Rev.” Peter Turck in New York

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 3 Comments

Religion played a large role in the lives of many—but by no means all—19th-century Americans. This was certainly true for Mary (Turck) Clark’s father, Peter Turck (1798-1872). In a number of ways, Peter Turck’s changing relationship to religion is a unique, personal story, but is also a story that encompasses many strands of the religious experience of this formative period in American history.

The Dutch-American heritage

Previously, we looked at Peter’s 1798 DRC baptismal record. Most, if not all, of his siblings were baptized in the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) in various Columbia County, New York, churches. And as far as I have been able to discover, almost all of Peter Turck’s ancestors were baptized in and members of the DRC in early New Holland and New York, all the way back to the original Turck immigrant, Paulus Jacobsz. Turk (~1635-1703), who came to New Amsterdam (later New York City) before 1660. So how did someone with such long and deep family ties to the Reformed Church—such as Peter Turck—become “an ardent preacher of the Baptist faith”?1

The Second Great Awakening

The Dutch Reformed Church was not the only Christian denomination in the Hudson River valley during Peter Turck’s early years. While a large percentage of the area’s residents were of Dutch and DRC heritage, the valley had many Anglo- and German-Americans as well. All were served by various Protestant denominations including the Baptist, Lutheran and Protestant Episcopal churches, and the Society of Friends. More significantly, Peter Turck’s youth also coincided with the Second Great Awakening of religious fervor in America.

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The Turcks sell their Palmyra land, 1832

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

The Peter and Rachael (Gay) Turck family in Wayne Co. deeds (part 2)

Today’s post continues our series where we use deed records to follow the lives of the Peter and Rachael (Gay) Turck family—including young Mary Turck—from the 1820s through their emigration to Mequon in 1837. This post will make more sense if you read our previous Monday: Map Day! and The Turcks – Catskill to Palmyra, 1828.

Earlier, we discovered that on April 21, 1828, Peter Turck of Catskill, Greene county, New York, bought 76 acres of land in Palmyra Township, Wayne County, New York. He paid $1,475.00 “cash in hand” to the sellers, Ellera and Catherine Potter. The record of this transaction was found on pages 266-267 of the Wayne County, New York, Deed Books, Vol. 12.

Four and a-half years later…

Today’s 1832 deed, in which Peter Turck sells the same land that he purchased in 1828, is recorded in the same deed book, immediately following the (apparently delayed) recording of his 1828 transaction. This new 1832 land sale covers parts of pages 267-268 of Vol. 12 of the Wayne County, New York, Deed Books:

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RBOH – Photo Mystery, 1865

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

Another in our occasional series of Random Bits of History, illustrating life as experienced by the early Mequon settlers and their contemporaries. Today we examine a photograph that may—or may not—depict an early Mequon settler or their kin.

Is this a photo of young Sarah (Strickland) Clark?

Reader Eric Pearman is a descendant of early Mequon settlers Cyrus Clark and Sarah Strickland. For a while last year Clark House Historian spent some time tracing Cyrus and Sarah’s lives, and analyzing some old photographs of those Mequon pioneers here, here, here, here and here (and a few more places, too; just use the blog’s Search function and keyword “Cyrus” or “tintype”).

Eric recently sent me this, unidentified, photo that belonged to a Cyrus and Sarah Clark descendent, and wondered if it might be of a previously un-photographed member of the Cyrus Clark or Sarah Strickland families. Even if this is not a Cyrus Clark or Sarah Strickland family member, the photo has a unique feature that you may want to know about as you examine other old photos. Let’s take a look…

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The Turcks – Catskill to Palmyra, 1828

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 3 Comments

The Peter and Rachael (Gay) Turck family in Wayne Co. deeds (part 1)

This post will make more sense if you read our previous Monday: Map Day! post first. And then grab a hot beverage and settle in for some quality time with old legal documents…

If you’ve been reading the blog for a while, you may have noticed that I usually like to gather various bits of evidence, think about them for a bit—”behind the scenes,” so to speak—and then present them to you as a coherent (I hope!) narrative that sheds light on some aspect of the history of the Clark House, its inhabitants or their community. For years, I’ve wanted to do that with the story of the Peter and Rachael (Gay) Turck family and their migration to Wayne County, New York in the late 1820s, but we have very few records of the family from this period.

In order to make an accurate timeline of the Turcks’ years near the Erie Canal, I need to—finally—wade through the few records that do exist: land deeds recorded in Vol. 12 of the Wayne County, New York, deed books. The legal prose in these deeds is often so thick and convoluted that it’s hard to just skim them and find the useful bits. So since I need to transcribe, read, and interpret a number of handwritten deeds anyway, I thought I’d share the process with you, here on the blog. Today will be the first of several posts featuring transcriptions of the old deeds. Once we’ve transcribed them, we’ll sort through each and see what we can find out about the Turcks’ lives in the eight years before they came to the Wisconsin Territory.

The Challenge

Here’s the first page of today’s deed. Peter Turck’s contract (“indenture”) to purchase land begins about a third of the way down the page, just below the horizontal double-line:

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Monday: Map Day! – Wayne County, 1829

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 6 Comments

Before Mequon: finding Mary Turck’s home in upstate New York

Tracing the lives of Americans in the first decades of the 19th-century can be challenging. Whether along the expanding frontier, or in long-established and settled areas such as New York’s Hudson River valley, there are often many unhelpful gaps in the paper trail. Even the federal census—which counted, every ten years, “all persons” living in America—only recorded the name of the “head” of each (white) family, and the sex and age ranges of other members of the household.

So what do we know about the Peter and Rachael (Gay) Turck family in the years before they arrived in Mequon? As we discussed previously, we know the family had deep roots in the traditionally Dutch-American communities of the Hudson River valley’s Ulster, Greene, Dutchess and Columbia counties. We know Mary Turck was born in Athens, Greene county, in 1821, the eldest child of Peter and Rachael (Gay) Turck. By tracing the baptismal registers (where they exist) and other biographical records of her younger siblings, we know that by 1833 the family was in Palmyra, Wayne County, New York.

Wayne County: Palmyra and Macedon

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Erie Canal – the Bonniwell Family 1832-39

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 7 Comments

Inspired by our earlier looks at the influence of the Erie Canal on the early lives of both Jonathan M. Clark and the Peter and Rachael (Gay) Turck family (here and here), I thought I’d share more stories of Mequon settlers that used the canal to make their way westward to the wilds of the Wisconsin Territory in the 1830s and ’40s. Today’s focus is on the Bonniwell family.

England to Montréal to New York

Originally from Chatham, Kent Co., England, the William T. B. and Eleanor (Hills) Bonniwell family came to Lower Canada by ship, sailing across the Atlantic Ocean and up the St. Lawrence River to Montréal. Shortly after arrival in 1832, family patriarch William T. B Bonniwell died there of cholera.

Following her husband’s untimely death, Eleanor (Hills) Bonniwell, decided to leave Montréal and take her children south to New York City, via the Richelieu River, Lake Champlain and the new Champlain Canal connecting Whitehall, New York, to the Hudson River. Two of her sons, George and William Bonniwell, had already located and found work in New York City.

After living for a bit in New York City, Eleanor moved upriver to the town of Esopus, Ulster County, on the west bank of the Hudson River. Sometime around 1835 Eleanor Bonniwell married a second time. Her new husband was a widower, Captain Christopher Hyde, of the town of Hyde Park, just across the river in Dutchess County.

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Erie Canal – Macedon, New York

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 5 Comments

As a follow up to our look at the Erie Canal and our Turck and Clark families, I’ve been researching and writing about some other early Mequon settlers and their migrations to Mequon from Lower Canada, Nova Scotia, New England and New York. It’s taking longer than I expected.

Until those posts are ready, here’s a photo of one of the historic Erie Canal locks, near Macedon, Wayne County, New York. Peter and Rachael (Gay) Turck lived nearby from sometime around 1828 until they went west to Buffalo, New York to begin their steamship journey to Milwaukee in July or August, 1837. A large number of other early Mequon immigrants, including the Bonniwell and Woodworth families, also would have passed through this lock (or its predecessor) on their way their new homes in Wisconsin.

Historic Erie Canal Lock No. 60, near Macedon, Wayne Co., New York, looking to the west. Photo by Reed Perkins, 2011. Click to open larger image in new window.

This is the expanded, second version of this lock. When it was built in 1821, as part of the original canal, it was Lock 71. As a nearby marker explains:

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Monday: Map Day! – The Erie Canal

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 14 Comments

Turck, Gay & Clark in the early years of the Erie Canal

New York state’s Erie Canal was one of the wonders of the modern world when it first opened to the public in 1825. The original 362 miles of canals and locks connected the Hudson River at Albany, in the east, with Lake Erie at Buffalo, in the west. This made a faster, more economical connection between the goods and markets of the eastern states and Atlantic seaboard and the newly opened lands, crops, and timber products of the nation’s newest states and territories.

Another important part of the New York state canal system was the Champlain Canal. It was built at the same time as the Erie Canal and connected Canada and western New England—via Lake Champlain—to New York and the world. Today’s map shows the course of both the Erie Canal and the Champlain Canal, and their rise and fall, as they existed in in the early 1830s. In the 1820s and ’30s, these two canals made possible the westward migration of many of Mequon’s early settlers, including—among others—the Turck, Bonniwell, Woodworth, Strickland, and Loomer families, and the young Jonathan M. Clark. Let’s begin by looking at the whole map, and then zoom in on some particular Clark, Turck and Gay family details:

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