Fun and Games

Hail, Smiling morn! – 2022 edition

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins.

Happy New Year to all, and best wishes that 2022 will be an improvement on the past year. (A low bar, I know.) Anyway, when I first published this post, on January 1, 2021, I wrote: I’m almost done with my research on the second half of the 1843 concert by the Milwaukie Beethoven Society. (If you missed our earlier posts on that concert, links are here and here.) But it’s New Year’s Day, and I’m not quite done writing about “Part Second.”

Well, it turns out that “not quite done” was an optimistic estimate, as I became distracted by so many other research topics and posts and never got around to discussing the second part of the Milwaukee Beethoven Society’s concert. New Year’s Day is here again, and I’m still not done, alas, but I have not forgotten and—with luck—I will finish that post some time this winter.

A spot of Spofforth to ring in the New Year…

Meanwhile, let’s start the New Year on a cheerful note by reprising last year’s festive musical selection, drawn from that second part of the Milwaukee Beethoven Society’s 1843 premiere concert:

Milwaukee Weekly Sentinel March 15 1843, page 2. Click to open larger image in new window.

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Holiday Fun in NYC, 1864

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

It’s the week after Christmas. Perhaps you have family or friends visiting from out of town. If you have children, they’re home from school. How to keep them entertained? If you lived near New York City in 1864, you were in luck. Barnum’s American Museum was ready with spectacular and unique holiday exhibits for the whole family, all for the low, low, price of 25 cents for adults, 15 cents for children under age ten!

Barnum’s American Museum. Christmas and New Year holiday bill, 1864. [New York: Wynkoop, Hallenbeck & Thomas, Book and Job Printers, 113 Fulton St. N.Y], Library of Congress. Click to see larger, easier to read, image.

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Labor Day

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins.

Observed the first Monday in September, Labor Day is an annual celebration of the social and economic achievements of American workers. The holiday is rooted in the late nineteenth century, when labor activists pushed for a federal holiday to recognize the many contributions workers have made to America’s strength, prosperity, and well-being.

U.S. Dept. of Labor

Labor Day is often celebrated with parades and festive “end of summer” get-togethers in parks or at the beach. This year, with the continuing rise in Covid-19 cases, I think I’ll avoid the large gatherings. But a peaceful picnic with the family might be just the thing:

Tracey, John M. [Untitled—Picnic Scene], circa 1870. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mary Glancy Bragg, CC0. Click to open larger image in new window.

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CHH Reader Challenge – results!

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 3 Comments

At the end of last month, while working on some longer posts about the Turcks and Clarks, I had some fun creating the first Clark House Historian Reader Challenge: where you get to be the historian!, and today we have the results. The original challenge went something like this:

Here’s an excerpt of a document that will be part of an upcoming post. Can you read and transcribe it? (Ignore the squiggles in the top right corner, they belong to another record on the same page.)

The original CHH Reader Challenge #1. Click to open larger image in new window.

And I gave y’all a hint, the full page from which this record was excerpted. And as a second hint, I suggested that a look at my discussion of Kurrent handwriting might be helpful.

So what is this a record of, and what does it say?

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Snow!

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

We got some snow in southeast Wisconsin over the weekend, and I’ve spent good parts of the past two days shoveling the driveway and sidewalk. (And then—of course—shoveling the driveway a second time after the city plow finally came through.) Of course, snow was a feature of Jonathan and Mary Clark’s time, too:

Currier & Ives. (1853) The road, winter / O. Knirsch, lith. United States, 1853. New York: Published by Currier & Ives. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/93511164/ (lightly retouched for color balance). Click to open larger image in new window.

We don’t know if the Clarks owned a sleigh while they lived in Mequon. I suspect they probably did, though their sleigh—and their clothing—may not have been quite as posh as those in this Currier & Ives lithograph from 1853.

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CHH Reader Challenge!

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 6 Comments

I’m working on some longer posts about Peter Turck, Mary Turck Clark, and other Jonathan Clark House related topics. One of those posts should be ready by Friday.

Meanwhile, here’s a Clark House Historian Reader Challenge: where you get to be the historian!

Here’s an excerpt of a document that will be part of an upcoming post. Can you read and transcribe it?

CHH Reader Challenge #1. Click to open larger image in new window.

Ignore the squiggles in the top right corner, they belong to another record on the same page.

Need a hint? Here’s the whole page that this record is taken from:

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