Documents & Sources

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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Searching for JMC’s roots in Eastern Township sources: books (part 2)

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

UPDATED Nov. 9, 2023 to correct Mrs. Day’s first name. It’s Catherine (not Caroline) Matilda Day.

Continuing our search for Jonathan M. Clark’s supposed ancestry in Stanstead, Eastern Townships, Lower Canada—and before the deluge of original, mostly handwritten, documents from the Land Petitions of Lower Canada, 1764-1841 begins—we have another interesting and useful book to add to the first installment of our book list.

Day. 1863. Pioneers of the Eastern Townships1
Day, Mrs. C. M. [Catherine Matilda], Pioneers of the Eastern townships : a work containing official and reliable information respecting the formation of settlements, with incidents in their early history, and details of adventures, perils and deliverances, Montreal, 1863. Online via Canadiana, accessed September 24, 2023.

This early collection of Eastern Township history is not to be confused with the same author’s longer and more comprehensive History of the Eastern Townships Province of Quebec of 1869. Today’s 1863 book, only about 170 pages, is not intended to be a broad survey of early Eastern Township history like its 1869 successor, and it does not have any Stanstead- or Clark-specific information. But researchers seeking information on early Lower Canada history, land patent process, and settlement will find Pioneers of the Eastern townships to be very helpful and illuminating in two distinct ways.

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Guest post! – Fitch & Ogden, the (contentious) founders of Stanstead

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 4 Comments

Today’s post is a special one: our first guest post on Clark House Historian! It’s an excellent, beautifully illustrated introduction to the very early history of the Township of Stanstead and the often contentions relationship between the two Leaders that made it happen, Col. Eleazar Fitch and Issac Ogden, Esq. I hope you enjoy the piece as much as I did. Many thanks to guest author Jeffrey Packard and Heritage Ogden – Patrimoine d’Ogden for permission to publish this on Clark House Historian. See my postscript, below, for more on the author and his organization. For readers new to this part of Québec, the Municipality of Ogden is, generally speaking, the southwest corner of the historic Township of Stanstead, one of two reputed birthplaces of Jonathan M. Clark. And, as always, be sure to click on each image to open larger, higher-resolution versions in gallery view or a new window.

Eleazer Fitch, Isaac Ogden, and the Stanstead Township Grant: a strained attorney-client relationship

Dr. Jeffrey Packard, president, Heritage Ogden – Patrimoine d’Ogden. Copyright © 2023 by Jeffrey Packard, Heritage Ogden – Patrimoine d’Ogden.

Toponomic Namesakes

There is Fitch Bay and the Municipality of Ogden, but few realize that their respective namesakes had a five year long and not always amicable relationship as the two men both separately and collectively attempted to secure a land grant of 40,000+ acres on the east side of Lac Memphrémagog. This article describes the lead-up to the formal granting of the Patent for the Township of Stanstead in 1800, and provides the story of these two Loyalists, who were pivotal in the early history of the area.

Colonel Eleazer Fitch

Eleazer Fitch was born August 29th in 1726 in Lebanon, Connecticut to relatively affluent parents. As a young man he attended Yale where he studied law. He was described as broad and handsome and at 6’ 4” and 300 lbs he was most certainly an imposing figure for those days. At age 19 he married Amy Brown and eventually their family grew to 12 children (8 daughters and 4 sons). He fought in the Seven Years War where he served as a major of the 4th Connecticut Regiment, and was involved in the capture of Fort Ticonderoga. He was a successful business man, and furthermore had business interests in association with the Governor of Connecticut. He was also heavily involved with land speculation in Pennsylvania.

At left, Windham, Connecticut circa 1826. At right Eleazer Fitch house on Zion Hill in Windham. Exterior of house modified in late Victorian times, original façade would have evident Georgian symmetry and simplicity. Built in 1763, the house burnt in 1923.

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Searching for JMC’s roots: Québec land & records

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

A tale in four news clippings

As you know by now, we believe that Jonathan M. Clark was born or raised—or both—in or near the Township of Stanstead, Lower Canada. Who his parents were, where they came from, and what happened to them afterwards, are important questions that we have yet to answer. There are two main stumbling blocks. On the one hand, reliable birth, marriage, death and similar records for this part of Lower Canada and northern Vermont do not begin to appear on a regular basis until a decade or more after JMC’s birth in 1811/1812. And at the same time, the CLARK surname is unbelievably common in New England and the adjacent parts of English-speaking Canada. There are just too many Clark families listed in relevant indexes and archives to even begin a useful search; for a productive search, we need a way to narrow the list to only those Clarks that might be related to JMC.

So one of my first steps in this (renewed) search is to go Clark-hunting among the larger archival sources of Lower Canada, record the potentially-relevant Clark-related information and (full) names that I find, and make a big list of persons named Clark that were in or near Stanstead between about 1790-1830. If we get really lucky, we”ll find specific records of JMC, his parents, and his family. More likely, we’ll end up with a massive list of people named Clark, and from that list we can see which of these Clarks stand out as likely suspects, identify—where possible—which Clarks are definitely not “our” Clarks, and proceed from there.

For the next several weeks our name collecting expedition will be focused on the Library and Archives Canada (LAC) database of Land Petitions of Lower Canada, 1764-1841. I suspect many of our U.S. readers will see that and wonder: why waste time in that seemingly arcane archive? (Our Canadian readers will probably nod their heads and think, yes, that sounds like a very logical place to look for early Clark and Stanstead documents).

A history in 4 newspaper items

So for those readers whose knowledge of Canada history is spotty at best, let me give a very, very brief explanation of a few bits of pertinent local history, including the Loyalist issue, how Québec became Lower Canada, and how JMC’s ancestors—and their relatives and neighbors—might have been enticed to move to Lower Canada, using four contemporary newspaper clippings.

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Searching for JMC’s roots: getting organized

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 3 Comments

I’ve spent the last four or five days deep in the Library and Archives Canada (LAC) database of Land Petitions of Lower Canada, 1764-1841.

I’ve searched this database before—and found some interesting bits and pieces—but the enormous quantity of digitized page images (sometimes hundreds of images in a single file), the limited name-only search indexing, and the somewhat quirky image-browsing interface, made results very hit and miss. Which is too bad, because there are treasures of historical and genealogical information to be found in the files.

So—confronted by such a massive pile of documents and files–what’s a historian to do? Well, desperate times call for desperate measures, so…

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Monday: Map Day! Bouchette, Jr.’s map of Upper & Lower Canada, 1831

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

Today’s spectacular Map of the Provinces of Lower & Upper Canada.1 was created by Joseph Bouchette, Jr., et. al., and published in London in 1831. It was made as a companion to his father’s exhaustive written description of the same territory, British Dominions of North America, also published in 1831.2

Bouchette, Joseph Jun., Joseph Bouchette [Sr.], et. al., Map of the Provinces of Lower & Upper Canada, London, James Wyld, 1831.David Rumsey Map Collection.3

We are particularly interested in this map as it shows the British possessions in North America—essentially present-day Canada—as they were understood in 1831, the year JMC migrated to New York state, and a year before the Bonniwell family arrived in Lower Canada (Québec). And when compared to Bouchette, Sr.’s great map of Upper and Lower Canada in 1815, it illustrates the rapid growth of British North America, and the Eastern Townships, in the decade and a half since the end of the War of 1812 (1812-1815).

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