This is another installment in the transportation-themed series that began with our July 6, 2021, Monday: Map Day! – How’d they get here? and continues from there.
Queen, James Fuller, [A Man and a Woman Standing at the Entrance to a Trail Through a Forest] (detail), graphite drawing on cream paper, circa 1850-1870. Library of Congress
I’m still writing the next two (or three) longer, narrative installments of our “How’d they get here?” series, which I began working on to assist Clark House education director Margaret Bussone and our education team as they develop a transportation-themed project for use at the Jonathan Clark House later this summer.
For quite a while I was worried that I would not be able to find enough visual material to adequately illustrate our early Mequon immigrants’ journeys of the 1830s and ’40s. It turns out that I now have a lot of material to share with the education team—and with you. Rather than hold on to it until my longer posts are complete, I thought I’d do something different today.
UPDATED August 12, 2021 (twice), with more information on Orange Dibble’s derrick, illustrated below. See my reply to the question from reader Chester T. Hartwell in Comments, below.
UPDATED July 29, 2021, to include some new general information and details about several of the images sent by reader Robert Randall, second vice-president of the Camillus Canal Society. For Mr. Randall’s full message, see Comments, below. For more on the society’s Camillus Erie Canal Park, click here.
How the early settlers came to Mequon, c. 1835-1850 (part 3)
Our series of “How’d they get here?” posts is written—in part—to help our education team put together a Clark House Museum educational activity. The idea is to illustrate the nuts and bolts of how our early Mequon pioneers travelled from their original homes or ports of arrival in North America, to the newly opened federal lands in Wisconsin Territory, circa 1835-1850. (If you missed ’em, the previous parts are here and here, with a bonus image, here.)
Erie Canal images – 1825!
Finally!! For years, I’ve been searching for images of the unique, low-draft, narrow-sided, low-height, lock-length boats designed for and used in the earliest years of the Erie and Champlain canals (c. 1825-1840). And year after year, I had no luck finding such images…until this week.
You might be thinking, “hasn’t Clark House Historian already spent quite a bit of time on the Erie Canal?,” and you’d be correct. But it’s hard to overstate the national and international importance of the Erie Canal on world trade and American westward expansion in the decades after its opening in 1825. And while we have used maps to illustrate the migration routes of some Mequon settlers (such as the Turck, Gay, Bonniwell, and Woodworthfamilies), I wasn’t able to adequately illustrate the details of how they travelled in the early days of the canal era. Until now.
Today’s treasure trove of early canal images is from Cadwalleder Colden, et. al., Memoir…at the Completion of the New York Canals, New York, 1825. Many of these images are from the “extra-illustrated” edition in New York Public Library Digital Collections; you can download and enjoy a scanned copy of the standard edition of the book via GoogleBooks. Yes, these images are a bit early for our generally 1835-1850 “How’d they get there?” timeframe. But these are, by far, the best visual representations of early New York canal travel that I have seen. Even though Jonathan M. Clark, and the Woodworth and Bonniwell families and other Mequon settlers did not travel on the canals until the 1830s, these images depict scenes they would have experienced along the Champlain and Erie canals.
Please take a close look at each image for the “big picture,” then click on each and zoom in on the details. All the images can be clicked on to open as a larger, downloadable, image in a new window. All images are believed to be in the public domain, and I encourage you to enjoy, download, save, share and use them as you see fit.
Canal Boats
Here is an excellent view of a group of the new canal boats, loading freight and soliciting business at the North [i.e., Hudson] River docks, New York City, before heading up the Hudson to Albany and the canals:
Canal boats on the north river, New York, in Cadwallader Colden, et. al., Memoir…at the Completion of the New York Canals, New York, 1825. Image from “extra-illustrated” edition in New York Public Library Digital Collections, scanned copy of standard edition of book via GoogleBooks.
As we learned in our previous post, Henry Clark—only son of Jonathan M. and Mary (Turck) Clark—was buried “in Cedarburg” on Monday, April 23, 1866. But if you seek Henry’s final resting place, you’ll find him next to his father, mother, and sister Josie in the Clark family lot at historic Forest Home Cemetery in Milwaukee. How this came to be, and what this tells us about Clark family history, is the subject of today’s post.
Clark family graves, lot 3, block 44, section 10, Forest Home Cemetery, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Photo courtesy Liz Hickman, 2016. Click to open new image in larger window.
In our previous post, we discovered that Henry M. Clark was drafted for Civil War military service on November 10, 1863. Today we will look at the existing evidence recording Henry’s death and burial in April, 1866, aged 23. So far, we lack reliable documentation for Henry’s life during the 28 months between those dates; we’ll continue the search for Henry’s possible Civil War service in a series of upcoming posts.
The question remains: why did Henry Clark, only son of Jonathan M. and Mary (Turck) Clark, die so young? Milwaukee death records for the 1860s are uneven and incomplete; it’s not surprising that no death certificate exists. I have not been able to find a death notice in the Milwaukee newspapers. But we do have two contemporary sources that can shed some light onto the mystery of this Clark family loss.
Densmore W. Maxon’s 1866 diary
On April 2, 1846, Mary Turck Clark’s younger sister Elizabeth Turck (1828-1913) married an ambitious young settler, Densmore W. Maxon (1820-1887). Maxon began his Wisconsin years as a surveyor, and eventually rose to prominence as a businessman and politician. He laid out the village of Cedar Creek, Town of Polk, Washington county, about 18 miles north and west of the Jonathan Clark house in Mequon. Densmore and Elizabeth Maxon lived in Cedar Creek for the next 41 years.
The lives of the Maxons, Clarks and Turcks are deeply intertwined from the 1840s onwards. For at least one year, 1866, Densmore Maxon kept a pocket diary. These pages contain his notes on the final days of nephew, Henry Clark:
What we do — and don’t — know about the Clarks’ only son (part 2)
This is the second in a series of posts examining what we do — and don’t — know about Henry Clark, his life, and his possible military service. If you missed it, you might want to start with part 1: Meet the Children: Henry M. Clark
Reading, Mass. Selectmen. The union must be preserved! The citizens of Reading are hereby invited to meet at Lyceum Hall to-morrow, Thursday, at 6 o’clock. P.M., to make such arrangements as may seem necessary to raise our proportion of volunteers … Selectmen of Reading. Boston, 1862. Library of Congress Meetings such as this were held all over the North—including Wisconsin—before and after the passage of the Militia Act of 1862. Click to open larger image in a new window.
UPDATED with correction, June 18, 2021: The Peter Turck house at 474 Jefferson was (and is?) in Milwaukee’s seventh ward. Why I said “second ward” when the map clearly shows “VII” or seventh ward is a mystery. So please note the correction to the headline and content of the relevant paragraph “The Seventh Ward,” below.
What we do — and don’t — know about the Clarks’ only son (part 1)
Jonathan M. and Mary (Turck) Clark had eight children: seven daughters and one son, Henry M. Clark (1843-1866). The Clark children were born between 1840 and 1857. All lived to adulthood, some longer than others. For a general overview of the Clark children, including birth and death dates, start with our earlier posts Meet the Children (part 1) and History Mystery! No. 2 – The Clark “Family Record.”
Although we know quite a bit about most of the Clark children, our recent Memorial Day 2021 post reminds us that we know very little about several important aspects of Henry Clark’s life, in particular: did he serve in the Civil War? I’ve been working on this question, off and on, for a number of years, and I think it’s time to pull the sources together and see what really we do — and don’t — know about Henry Clark, his life, and his possible military service.
There is a lot of information to sort through and interpret, so this post will be the first of several about Henry and the events of his life. Today we focus on what we know of Henry’s life before the Civil War.
——— 1840s ———
1843(?)
The first documentary mention of Henry Clark may possibly be this report of his birth on February, 21, 1843, written at an unknown date in the Clark “Family Record”:
Another episode in our Infrastructure! series, a group of posts focused on the first government “improvements” in old Washington/Ozaukee county. If you need to catch up, start with Monday: Map Day – The First County Roads, 1841, then Marking Out the Roads, and our most recent post, Roads into the Woods, 1841, where we rediscovered the routes of old Washington/Ozaukee county’s very first roads.
First federal and county roads
In early 1841, before the commissioners approved county roads Nos. 1, 2, and 3, there was already one federal road in the county. The Green Bay road was a federal road, cut by the troops of the U.S. army’s 5th regiment. It ran generally south to north, joining Ft. Dearborn in Chicago to the regiment’s headquarters at Ft. Howard in Green Bay. Along the way it passed through a number of growing settlements including the three villages that would become Milwaukee, and the future towns of Mequon, Cedarburg, and Grafton. On the map below the Green Bay road is west of and occasionally parallels the Milwaukee River. It is sometimes labeled Green Bay Road, and sometimes—in the southern part of this map—Plank Road (the planking came later, in the 1850s).
Mapping out the first three Washington/Ozaukee county roads is not difficult. The proposals by the road supervisors, as recorded in the official minutes1, were quite precise. Clear starting and ending points were given, using the standard terminology of towns, ranges, sections, quarter sections and so on, and the lengths of each proposed road had been precisely measured in miles, with fractional miles given as a number of additional chains, rods or links. A map of those first three roads—superimposed on a later map of Washington and Ozaukee counties from 1874—looks like this:
Our Infrastructure! series— a short group of posts focused on the first county government “improvements” in old Washington/Ozaukee county began (almost a month ago!) with Monday: Map Day!, discussing the 1841 appointment of the first county road supervisors and the organization of the county’s first seven road districts. That was followed up with a discussion of surveyors, their tools, and Jonathan M. Clark’s experiences as a military road builder. Today we’ll take a look at the first few roads laid out and built in old Washington/Ozaukee county in early 1841.
Last week’s Monday: Map Day! discussed the Milwaukee and Superior railroad, and the right-of-way through the middle of the Clark farm property that it purchased from Jonathan and Mary Clark in 1857. Even if you already read it, take another look. I’ve recently updated that post to include corrections and new information from reader Sam Cutler (thanks, Sam!).
Today’s post begins Infrastructure Week! a short series focused on the first infrastructure projects in old Washington/Ozaukee county, beginning with the 1841 appointment of the first county road supervisors and their districts.
Old Washington/Ozaukee County, 1837
In order to proceed with county business, the original county commissioners must have had an authoritative map that showed the official county and township boundaries. I would not be surprised if they owned a copy of the 1837 Topographical map of Wisconsin Territory, showing the lands that had been surveyed by, and were available for purchase from, the federal government. As we discussed earlier, this was the first large-scale map of the Wisconsin Territory based on actual surveys. Here’s a detail from that map, showing old Washington county as the 1841 county commissioners would have understood it:
Clark House Historian 