Jonathan Clark House Museum

I’m talking about history, again! – at the MCGS

/ Genealogist & Historian Reed Perkins. / Leave a comment

I like to give illustrated talks about history, especially the history of the Jonathan Clark House, its occupants, their neighbors, and their lives in early Wisconsin territory and state. Back on Friday, April 24, 2026, I spoke to the members of the Milwaukee County Genealogical Society about the German immigrant experience in our area circa 1845–1910, as lived by the extended family of German immigrant—and 1868-1873 Clark House occupant and farmer—Fred Beckmann. The talk went well, and I’ve been invited to speak to the MCGS again, this Saturday, September 26, at 10:00 a.m., at Milwaukee’s Central Public Library Downtown.

Scenes from my previous MCGS presentation at the Milwaukee Central Public Library Downtown, April, 2026. Photo credit: Laura Rexroth.

What’s it about?

This month’s MCGS presentation is titled From the ‘Burg to the Battlefield…and Back: A Local German-American Family and their Civil War Experiences.

The American Civil War is a huge topic, with many famous—and lesser-known—aspects, and no one talk can cover them all. So, rather than try and squeeze a grand overview of the war and its many battles into less than an hour, we will discuss some interesting and unusual aspects of the war—as experienced by some of Wisconsin’s German-American soldiers— that may have gotten lost over time. And we’ll do this by focusing on the Civil War experiences of one local family, the siblings and future in-laws of recent German immigrant Fred Beckmann.

You’re invited!

My Saturday, September 26, 2026, MCGS presentation will be held in the 1st floor Rotary Club of Milwaukee community meeting room of the Milwaukee Central Public Library Downtown, 814 West Wisconsin Avenue, Milwaukee. The event will start with a short MCGS business meeting at 10:00 a.m. My presentation begins about 10:15 a.m. and will last about 45 minutes, followed by plenty of time for questions & answers. The meeting is free and open to the public, and I hope to see you all there.

Sound interesting? Click “continue reading” for more details.

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Farewell Old Cottage…

/ Genealogist & Historian Reed Perkins. / Leave a comment

Farewell old cottage, cover image (detail) for the Stephen Foster song of the same title, published by Firth, Ford, & Co, New York, ca. 1851. Library of Congress

Changes

There’s been a change in my relationship with the Jonathan Clark House Museum, and that means that change is also coming to this blog, created and published by me since March, 2016, as “Clark House Historian.” In fact, this post is my 499th—and final—post under the blog title of “Clark House Historian.”

However, I will continue to write and publish this blog, under a new title, at the same web address, https://jchmhistorian.com/ and we will continue to explore many of the same Clark-era historical topics—and more! But the title of the blog will change. As of June 1, 2026, instead of “Clark House Historian,” this blog will be known as “Clark Heritage & History.”

If you are already a regular reader or free subscriber to the blog, thank you for reading! I value your support and interest. Subscribers, please let me know if you have any difficulty receiving the usual email announcements that appear in your inbox whenever a new post goes live. If you have active spam-blocking in your email inbox, you may want to change the “approved sender” for these CHH email announcements from the old “Clark House Historian” name to the new name: “Clark Heritage & History.” If you have any questions, comments, technical issues that need solving, please Contact me.

What’s going on?

Why the changes? Continue reading…

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I’m talking about history – at the MCGS

/ Genealogist & Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

I like to talk about history, especially the history of the Jonathan Clark House, its occupants, and their lives in early Wisconsin territory and state. Sometimes I get invited to share my research with others, and I put together an illustrated presentation. This coming Friday, April 24, 2026, I’ll be talking to the members of the Milwaukee County Genealogical Society about the German immigrant experience in our area circa 1845–1910, as lived by the extended family of German immigrant, and Clark House occupant, Fred Beckmann.

You’re invited!

My April 24th MCGS presentation will be held in the 1st floor Rotary Club of Milwaukee community meeting room of the Milwaukee Central Public Library Downtown, 814 West Wisconsin Avenue, Milwaukee. The event will start with a short business meeting at 1:00 p.m. My presentation begins about 1:15 p.m. and will last about 45 minutes, followed by plenty of time for questions & answers. The meeting is free and open to the general public, and I hope to see you all there.

Is there more to say about Fred Beckmann?

Indeed there is!

As you may recall from earlier CHH blog posts like (this one) and (this one), Fred Beckmann and his new wife, Lena Hackfeld, lived in the Clark House, and farmed the Clark farm, from 1868 until 1873. Their story connects the history of the early Anglo-American settlement of Mequon with the subsequent influx of German-speaking immigrants to the area.

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It’s our 10th birthday!

/ Genealogist & Historian Reed Perkins. / 4 Comments

This blog, Clark House Historian, published its first post 10 years ago today! (And just to be clear, the Clark House Historian blog is ten years old today. Reed Perkins, the Jonathan M. Clark House historian and author of the blog is, alas, a good deal older…)

Time to celebrate!

Our first post was a modest, two-paragraph “welcome” post, reproduced—in its entirety—below:

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Jonathan and Mary Clark’s first home

/ Genealogist & Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

Home Sweet Home., ca. 1876. [New York: publisher not transcribed]. Library of Congress.

One of the first and most important tasks for any settlers arriving in the recently “opened-for-settlement” Wisconsin Territory was to create some sort of dwelling to shelter themselves as they carved out new farmsteads amid the dense hardwood forests. But what sort of quickly-built structures did our immigrants first construct and take shelter in?

Obviously, the big, stone, full-basement, two-story, Greek Revival style Jonathan Clark House, with its “1848” inscription carved over the front door, and its many double-hung sash windows, was not a hastily-made “first shelter” for newlyweds Jonathan and Mary (Turck) Clark. They must have had another, smaller, first home. What was that first home like? Until now we have assumed that the Clarks’ first home was probably a log cabin, and not some kind of “shanty,” but we didn’t really know. In today’s post, we share with you a recently discovered document that—I believe—solves this mystery once and for all…

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Celebrating our Irish history

/ Genealogist & Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

Mark your calendar! This Saturday, March 7, 2026, from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon, the Jonathan Clark House Museum is hosting a St. Patrick’s Day event.

Graphic from the JCH website News & Events page

Did you know that in the early days of settlement, much of Cedarburg—and a surprising portion of Mequon—was home to Irish immigrants? Come by the Jonathan Clark House Museum on Saturday and find out if your home had Irish neighbors! Come look at historical maps while you nibble on house made butter and Irish soda bread and enjoy festive music on the Celtic Harp. Event co-sponsored by the Cedarburg History Museum.

The museum is located at the corner of Bonniwell and Cedarburg roads in Mequon, Wisconsin. We look forward to seeing you on Saturday! And as St. Patrick’s Day approaches, you might be interested in catching up on some previous, Irish-themed Clark House Historian posts. Just read on, click all the links, and Erin go Bragh!

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“Dashing through the snow…”

/ Genealogist & Historian Reed Perkins. / 3 Comments

As I write this, southeastern Wisconsin is in the midst of our first substantial snowfall of Winter, 2025-2026. In Jonathan and Mary Clark’s lifetime, the day after a storm like this meant it was time to hitch up the sleigh and have some fun “dashing through the snow.” Here’s a lightly-revised and expanded repeat of a post that celebrates Clark-era “sleighing time” and “jingle bells.” (And be sure to click the highlighted links for more vintage wintertime images and info.)

Kimmel and Forster, publishers, “Winter Pleasure in the Country,” circa 1865. National Museum of American History, Peters Prints Collection, Smithsonian Institution.1 Note the modest straps of jingle bells on the one-horse sleigh and the much more ostentatious—and louder—straps of bells on the two-horse sleigh.

Last winter, our earlier CHH posts Snow!, Shoveling out -and other winter chores and Stuff Happens – on a sleigh ride, got me wondering again about winter travel in old Washington/Ozaukee county during the Clarks’ era of the mid-1830s through the 1860s or so. Assuming most of the more successful farmers—such as the Clarks, Bonniwells and Turcks—owned a one- or two-horse sleigh, how easy was it to navigate that sleigh on the early county roads? Could you sleigh ride all the way to Milwaukee? And if you could, how long might that take?

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Liz Hickman (1944 – 2025)

/ Genealogist & Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

I am saddened to report that my dear friend and fellow Clark & Turck family researcher and descendant Elizabeth “Liz” Alice (Wenger) Hickman has died, at home with her family, at the age of 81.

A life well lived.

Her family has posted a lovely obituary online and it’s worth reading. It not only reviews Liz’s personal and professional achievements—and they were many—it also manages to give the reader a good sense of her lively, intelligent, and fun personality. These two excerpts were particularly good at capturing Liz as I knew her:

Liz was a woman of determination and unmatched work ethic, whose approach to life was reflected in her annual back-to-school advice to her daughters to “sit in the front row and ask lots of questions.”

[…] With an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, Liz read widely, was a passionate follower of current events, a collector of recipes, and a world traveler. She was keenly interested in technology, and often one of the earliest adopters in her family of any new technology or gadget.

Cousin Liz

Her obituary also recalls that “in retirement, Liz enjoyed genealogy, especially as it allowed her to find ‘new’ cousins and expand the family.” In 2012 it was my good fortune to become one of Liz’s newly-discovered cousins. Liz had noticed some of my early online corrections and additions to Turck and Clark documents and sources, and then contacted me through a genealogy message board. We exchanged emails and began to collaborate, and in no time we formed a happy and productive relationship as researchers and as kin.

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Hot off the press…

/ Genealogist & Historian Reed Perkins.

The new JCH Newsletter is here!

Hot off the (virtual) presses, the latest issue of the Jonathan Clark House Newsletter is here! Seven pages of JCH news, announcements, and photographs, recalling some of our summer 2025 activities and looking ahead to Fall at the Clark House. And fortunately for us—living in the 21st-century—no hand-typesetting, manual printing, or acid baths for copperplate engravings were required.

For all the details, and your own pdf copy of the new newsletter, click “Continue reading”…

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