UPDATED February 9 & 11, 2025, to correct the year and date of Fred. Beckmann’s death and investigate the apparent errors on his gravestone (see updated images, text, and especially Note 4, below).

Farming the Clark place, 1868-1873

In our previous post we saw that sometime around 1861/62, Mary Clark and her children decided to move to Milwaukee. By the time the Milwaukee City Directory for 1862 was published, Mary—and, we presume, her children—were living together with Mary’s father Peter Turck, at 474 Jefferson in the city.

We also know that Mary and her daughters did not sell the Mequon farm—to Catherine Doyle—until April, 1872. So, for over a decade, someone besides the Clark family was living and working on the Clark property. Most likely, Mary made some kind of tenant-farmer arrangement where someone grew crops on the Clark land and paid rent to Mary from the proceeds. This could have been a very useful source of income for Widow Clark and her seven children during the 1860s. Unfortunately, we don’t have much documentation of who the tenants may have been and what sort of arrangement Mary may have made with them.

The Doyle Family

In the same post, I also erred in assuming that the John and Catherine Doyle family probably farmed the Clark land throughout the 1860s. Clark House museum director Nina Look recently called my attention to information about the Doyles and their neighbors in various maps and census schedules created around 1870 that shows that the Doyles were living and farming elsewhere in Mequon through most of the 1860-1870 decade. In future posts I will look at those maps and census schedules and try and make more sense of where the Doyles lived and what land they may have farmed prior to purchasing the Clark farm in April, 1872.

Nina also reminded me that I forgot one important person that we know did farm the Clark farm: Fred Beckmann

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