Documents & Sources

JMC, the Army, and the Military Road, 1835-1840

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

Today’s post is a follow-up to our recent Monday: Map Day! – Wisconsin’s Federal Roads in 1840. It features another document created by the U.S. Army’s Corps of Topographical Engineers and preserved in the collections of the National Archives and Records Administration. Today’s drawing interests us as it documents—in some detail—the kind of road building work that Pvt. (later Sgt.) Jonathan M. Clark performed as a member of Company K, 5th Regiment, U.S. Infantry.

Webster, Jos. D, et. al., “Military Road from Fort Crawford to Fort Winnebago to Fort Howard (Wisconsin),” NARA, Record Group 77: Records of the Office of the Chief of Engineers, Series: Civil Works Map File, File Unit: United States, accessed here, April 14, 2024.

This document interests us because after JMC left the army he, with many of his early Mequon neighbors, spent a good part of the 1840s surveying, cutting, clearing, and grubbing out some of old Washington/Ozaukee county’s earliest roads. In the process, these pioneers had to bridge streams and rivers of various sizes and depths, and find ways to keep the unpaved roadway dry and firm. How did they do it with the limited supplies and tools at hand?

Today’s document shows how the U.S. Army solved some of those issues a bit farther north, on Wisconsin’s east-west Military Road. The techniques and approaches to road construction use there may have influenced how JMC and our early county road builders solved the problems of building roads in the forests, wetlands, and open prairies of 1840s Washington county.

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A. W. Clark’s 1907 genealogy: Nope, not our Clark family…

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins.

For the record, here’s one more source to add to our list of “not Jonathan M. Clark’s kin” dead ends in the search for JMC’s roots in northern Vermont and Lower Canada, circa 1800-1840.

Clark, Almon W., 1541-1907. The Clark family genealogy in the United States, a genealogical record showing sources of the English ancestors. Stamford, N.Y., Press of the Mirror-recorder, 1907. Library of Congress

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RBOH: Weston & Western, Loomis & Loomer, and how do you pronounce Isham?

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins.

Time for a few Random Bits of History: Early Mequon Settlers’ Disambiguation Edition.

John Weston & John Western

Mequon’s first postmaster, John Weston, is mentioned many times in the essential local history book, the History of Washington and Ozaukee Counties, Wisconsin … Illustrated. Western Historical Publishing Co., Chicago, 1881. Using the “Find” function on my PDF copy of the book,1 I found results for “John Weston” on pages 475, 476, 523, 524 and 545.

There is also an entry for “T. Weston” among the names on the “First Poll-List of Washington County” on page 316. I am confident that this is a typographical error and that “T. Weston” is actually John Weston.

The same source also records, among the early area settlers, one “John Western,” on pages 316, 477 and 478. Is this the same man as John Weston? I have carefully compared a number of sources, including the early minutes of the county road supervisors and deeds in the Washington/Ozaukee county deed books, and I am convinced that during the early years of settlement in the Mequon-Milwaukee area, “John Weston” and “John Western” are the same person, namely John Weston, born in New York about 1800, and married to Deborah Milliner in Milwaukee County in April, 1838. I’ll have examples from the documents that explain my reasoning in a future post.

Fun fact: Mary (Turck) Clark’s father, (Baptist) “Elder” Peter Turck, was the officiant at the Weston-Milliner wedding in 1838. It was the fortieth marriage recorded in the first volume of marriage records for Milwaukee county (and its still-attached for judicial purposes neighbor counties, including old Washington/Ozaukee county).2

With the Weston & Western mystery solved—for the moment—let’s see what other bits of error and confusion we can clear up…

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Meet the neighbors: the Loomis family

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 3 Comments

I’m in the middle of several larger CHH research projects and I find myself swamped with information on early Mequon area pioneers. So rather than wait until I’ve got it all sorted out and then organize it into a big essay or two (or more!), I’ll be putting up some of these new bits and pieces on the blog as I find them.

Today’s subjects are the families of Jonathan Loomis (1776-1849) and his eldest child, Issac Chester Loomis (1802-1882), two of old Washington/Ozaukee county’s first white settler families. I’ve mentioned some of these folks in previous CHH posts. And while the Loomis name does appear in some of the early county histories and land records, so far I’d not been able to learn much about the family or how they came to the Wisconsin Territory in the 1830s. In fact, given that the mid-1800s penmanship on some of the source documents was often florid to the point of being unreadable, I was sometimes unsure whether documents discussing or signed by “J. Loomis” versus “I. Loomis” represented the same man, or two individuals. Today’s source goes a long way toward solving these questions.1

Descendants of Joseph Loomis in America

Loomis, Elias, and Charles Arthur Hoppin. Descendants of Joseph Loomis in America, and his antecedents in the old world. edited by Loomis, Elisha S [Berea? O, 1909], Library of Congress.

As luck would have it, I just ran across a useful digitized book in the collection of the Library of Congress, titled Descendants of Joseph Loomis in America, and his antecedents in the old world. I’m not an expert in Loomis genealogy, and thus not entirely sure how accurate this book is, but what I have read here mostly checks out when compared to what I have found elsewhere. With that said, below are the key bits of the book that are related to very early Washington/Ozaukee county history and, in particular, Isaac Chester Loomis and his family. What follows is taken verbatim from pages 193 and 390-391, though I’ve taken the liberty of expanding many of the abbreviations and adding a few paragraph breaks for ease of reading. I’ve also added a few footnotes to explain some possibly obscure references.

Let’s begin with the patriarch of the family, Jonathan Loomis…

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Old Washington/Ozaukee county’s first postmasters, 1837-1844

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins.

I’m working on a subject suggested by my friends Sam Cutler and Bob Blazich from the Mequon-Thiensville Historical Society. Among other projects over the last few decades, they and their colleagues at the MTHS have restored what is believed to be Ozaukee county’s oldest building on its original foundation, the historic Isham Day house, and developed its interior into the Mequon River Postal Museum. Now my friends at the MTHS want to know more about the life of Mequon River Post Office’s original postmaster, one of Mequon’s very first pioneer settlers, John Weston.

Isham Day house, exterior, west front. Photo credit: Anna Perkins, 2021

So for the last several weeks I’ve been doing a great deal of behind-the-scenes reading and re-reading of primary and secondary sources, as well as a lot of searching for additional relevant documents, including early Milwaukee and Washington/Ozaukee county deeds and other land records. In the process, I’m learning a lot about John Weston, Isham Day, Henry Thien, and some of our other first white settlers. But I’m not quite ready to write a John Weston profile, and I still need to clear up some mysteries about Isham Day’s land and house, too.

First Postmaster(s)

New post office…at Mequan River…John Weston appointed postmaster, Milwaukee Advertiser, Oct. 10, 1840, page 2

Let’s get our bearings by making an accurate list of the county’s first postmasters and their terms of office. Our source is from the National Archives in Washington, DC, the Record of Appointment of Postmasters, 1832-Sept. 30, 1971; Records of the Post Office Department; Record Group Number: 28; Series: M841; Roll Number: 144. County: Polk – Wood, Vol. 12B, circa 1832-1844, pages 794-795, currently available via Ancestry.com as U.S., Appointments of U. S. Postmasters, 1832-1971 [database on-line], 2010, image 428 of 583 (accessed 18 Jan 2024). Here’s the microfilmed image of the two-page ledger recording Washington county’s first post offices and postmasters, slightly retouched to make for easier reading:

Click the image for a higher-resolution view, and then read on for more details about old Washington/Ozaukee county’s first two post offices and their original postmasters.

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Santa Claus visits Milwaukee, 1867

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins.

Tonight is Christmas Eve, and I thought you might enjoy an expanded reprise of our 1867 Santa Claus story, originally posted December 25 and 30, 2017. In 2021 I combined the two original posts and incorporated some new illustrations and a few revisions of the text. Here it is again, for your holiday enjoyment. Ho! Ho! Ho!

Christmas in early America

For many years now, Christmas has been celebrated by Americans as an important religious and (increasingly secular) community holiday. Christians gather to worship and commemorate the birth of Jesus, and they and other Americans enjoy a break from work to gather with family and friends to feast and exchange gifts. But it was not always this way.

In many of the American colonies, Christmas was not observed as a religious or secular holiday. The seventeenth-century Puritan leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony considered Christmas to be non-biblical and pagan influenced. In Boston and other parts of New England any observance of Christmas was prohibited and, for a few years, actually illegal:

Penalty for Keeping Christmas, 1659

Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England. Printed by order of the Legislature, edited by Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, M.D., Vol. IV, Part I, 1650-1660, online at mass.gov (accessed 21 Dec. 2021). Click to open larger image in new window.

Transcription:
For preventing disorders arising in several places within this jurisdiction, by reason of some still observing such festivals as were superstitiously kept in other countries, to the great dishonor of God and offence of others, it is therefore ordered by this Court and the authority thereof, that whosoever shall be found observing any such day as Christmas or the like, either by forbearing of labor, feasting, or any other way, upon such accounts as aforesaid, every such person so offending shall pay for every such offence five shillings, as a fine to the country.

Christmas was not generally accepted as a holiday in many parts of the United States until after the federal government made December 25 a national holiday in 1870.

On the other hand…

The Massachusetts Puritans may not have approved of “observing any such day as Christmas or the like, either by forbearing of labor, feasting, or any other way,” but Christmas was “kept in other countries” and increasing numbers of immigrants from those countries to the United States—particularly from Victorian England, Catholic Europe, and the German Lands—celebrated the day in their new American homes with many of their accustomed religious observances and national traditions.

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Home to Thanksgiving

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

It’s Thanksgiving tomorrow, and I’m taking a few days off to spend time with family. But in the spirit of the holiday, I thought I’d reprint a lightly revised version of our now-annual 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.

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Searching for JMC’s roots: land grants – the official process, 1792

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins.

Recently, we examined two competing petitions seeking a grant of land for what would become the township of Stanstead, Lower Canada. The first petition was successful, the second, not. We also suspect that many, if not most, of the signers of those petitions—including more that a dozen with Clark surnames—were probably not seriously interested in obtaining Crown lands and then pioneering in the wilderness of the 1790s Eastern Townships. As we continue our search for Jonathan M. Clark’s parents or other kin in 1790s and 1800s Lower Canada and adjacent Vermont and New Hampshire, how can we identify which Clarks might be related to JMC and which are not? What were the next steps for serious prospective Lower Canada immigrants and landowners?

In reviewing the secondary literature (part 1 and part 2) I learned, in a general way, what the next steps were for bona fide immigrants to Lower Canada, people that actually intended to settle in the townships and that desired a land grant. But some of the details were a bit vague. So I went and found the government’s official proclamation outlining the new land grant policy:

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Finding JMC’s roots: Word Search

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

I’m currently (happily) distracted as I get ready for a special family event, and blogging may be sparse for the next several days. But I’m still chipping away on our search for Jonathan M. Clark’s roots, looking for possibly-related Clark names in the early Land Petitions of Lower Canada, 1764-1841. Which is kind of like doing a Word Search puzzle, only with faded documents and sometimes-illegible 18th-century handwriting.

Beginner Level

Would you like to join in the search and Help the Historian? Here’s a “Searching for JMC’s Roots”-themed word search puzzle I made, just to get you warmed up:

Click the image to open and print your own copies of this version of the puzzle. Or, if you’d like to play online, just click this link: https://thewordsearch.com/puzzle/6172120/clark-house-word-search/

Look for the Clark House related words in all directions: horizontally, vertically or diagonally, both forwards and backwards. You can solve the online puzzle as many times as you like, and each time you play again, the layout of the puzzle changes. (If you play online, ignore the big orange rectangular button at the bottom of the screen that says “Next→”. It’s just a link to a page of unrelated ads.)

Each time you play you can also change the level of difficulty. Once you’ve developed your word-finding skills with our online puzzle, it’s time to Level Up!

Expert Edition

Here’s one of my current “puzzles,” the original 1792 Leaders & Associates’ petition to the Crown for a grant of land that would eventually become the Township of Stanstead, Lower Canada. Continue reading (below) to view the front side of the petition page. How many “Clark” signatures can you find? And can you transcribe all their first names accurately?

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Searching for JMC’s roots: Navigating the “Land Petitions of Lower Canada, 1764-1841”

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 3 Comments

We believe that Jonathan M. Clark was born or raised, or both, in or near the Township of Stanstead, Lower Canada, in 1811 or 1812. Who his parents were, where they came from, and what happened to them, are important questions that we want to answer. I’ve been searching the Library and Archives of Canada (LAC) database of Land Petitions of Lower Canada, 1764-1841, and I have located what I believe are the earliest founding documents for Stanstead. Before we begin our examination of these documents, looking for signs of early settlers named Clark or Clarke (and their relatives and neighbors), I thought I should share a few notes about what we are looking for, and how we can find it again, in case anyone would like to check or build on the work we’re doing here.

Finding the documents

How do you find records of your early Eastern Townships pioneer? Begin by clicking over to the Library and Archives Canada (LAC) database called Land Petitions of Lower Canada, 1764-1841. The (old but still operating1) home page for that database looks like this:

Read the information on this page. It’s not long, but it’s very helpful. One of the essential points to note is the description of what is—and is not—indexed in this database:

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