Today’s post is an updated, corrected and expanded version a post I wrote in July, 2020, outlining what we knew (at the time), about the life of Fred Beckmann, Sr., the man that occupied and farmed the Jonathan Clark farm between 1868 and 1872. Then, in early 2023, I was asked to talk about the Clark House and its Cedarburg connections at the Cedarburg History Museum. I chose to center my talk on Fred Beckmann and his extended German-American immigrant family, as I believe they exemplify a number of important themes in the transformation of Ozaukee county from the initial Anglo-American dominated first wave of local settlement in the 1830s and early ’40s, into the subsequent decades of primarily German-American settlement and development.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun, and learned a lot, in preparing that 2023 talk. And one of the things I learned is that there was some doubt about the year and date of Fred Beckmann’s death. So I recently investigated the issues and have updated images, text, and information for you about the life—and death—of Fred Beckmann, and I managed to solve at least one mystery in the process…

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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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