It may still be officially winter, and we’re not done yet with Covid-19, but Spring is coming and Jonathan Clark House activities have been in the news. Both the Mequon Beacon and Ozaukee County News Graphic have published articles on our “Become a Young Historian” project. Here is the Beacon article:
Click to open larger image in new window; article concludes, below.
Continue readingThe Friends of the Jonathan Clark House February newsletter is here! Many thanks to all the volunteers, donors, and Clark House board members for their continuing work “to collect, preserve and share the history of the Jonathan Clark House and the early settlers of Mequon Thiensville.”
Once again, Clark House executive director Nina Look has done a wonderful job leading the work of the museum, coordinating the volunteers, and putting together an informative and generously-illustrated newsletter. Just click on this image of the first page to open your own downloadable pdf in a new window:
The original version of this post was the second-ever post on Clark House Historian. It represented what we knew at the time about Mary Turck, the daughter of Peter Turck and Rachael Gay, wife of Jonathan M. Clark, and mother of the eight Clark family children. The original April, 2016, post was pretty accurate, but we have learned a lot more about Mary and her Turck and Clark families in the meantime. So here is a revised version of that post with errors corrected and ambiguities clarified—where possible.
Please note that there are many more facts about Mary and her Clark and Turck families that I’ve written about in the past almost-5 years that are not linked to in this post. If you are looking for more information about Mary, I highly recommend using the blog’s SEARCH function and our new INDEX. And if you still can’t find the info you want, please ask me! Just use the Leave a Reply box, below, or the CONTACT link, above.
Mary Turck Clark: Mequon Pioneer
Mary Turck Clark. Photograph courtesy Liz Hickman. Click to open larger image in new window.
Continue readingIn spite of the stresses and disruptions the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has brought to all of our lives, 2020 was a busy and productive year for the Jonathan Clark House Museum, and the many Clark House friends and volunteers that support its mission to collect, preserve and share the history of the Jonathan Clark House and the early settlers of Mequon-Thiensville.
As is her custom, Clark House Museum executive director Nina Look has put together an excellent—and generously illustrated—document summarizing our 2020 activities. To catch up with all that’s gone on in the past year with the museum and the Friends, and to enjoy all 12 pages of the report, either click this link, or click the photo of the report’s first page (below). Either should open the complete 2020 Annual Report in a new window for reading or downloading:
Before we come to the end of 2020, I’d like to share a little seasonal cheer with this pictorial look back at previous holidays at the Jonathan Clark House Museum. Many thanks to Nina Look, the JCH board, the community, and all the Clark House volunteers and young historians who give so much of their time and resources to keep the house alive.
If you’d like to support the Clark House and its mission to collect, preserve and share the history of the house and the early settlers of Mequon and Thiensville, please click here to make a donation. Thanks for reading, thank you for your support, and best wishes for a Happy and Healthy New Year!
Original photo pages by Nina Look. Click each page to open larger image in a new window:
December’s here, and I’m starting to get into the holiday spirit. That means lots of—mostly pleasant—chores and tasks at my home this week. So, no blog essay Wednesday or today.
But how about a holiday view of the Clark House, just to bring a little light to our wintry evenings?
Continue readingIt was Jonathan M. Clark’s birthday!
Note: this post has been updated twice on November 30, 2020, see below.
This past Saturday was the 208th anniversary of the birth of Jonathan M. Clark. If you missed our special birthday post, click here and catch up on all the new and updated information about Jonathan that we’ve discovered and published here at Clark House Historian since 2016.
One of the highlights of Saturday’s post was this photo of Jonathan’s excellent 200th Birthday cake from 2012, courtesy of Anne Bridges:
Click to open larger image in new window. Photo credit Nina Look.
No doubt about it, that is one fine birthday cake. (Thanks, Anne!) But what if you wanted to bake a cake that Jonathan or Mary Clark, or one of their early Mequon neighbors, might recognize? That calls for another look into the first cook book written and published by an American:
Continue readingNovember 28, 2020, is the 208th anniversary of the birth of Jonathan M. Clark. To celebrate, I’m reposting a revised, expanded and annotated version of one of my first Clark House Historian posts. Since this was first published, on April 20, 2016, we have learned much more about the lives of Jonathan Clark, Mary Turck Clark, their family and their neighbors. Please check out the footnotes and click on the links for some of this newer, more accurate, information.
Happy Birthday, Jonathan! (and thanks to Nina Look for the timely reminder).
JMC: Man of Mystery
Jonathan M. Clark. Photograph courtesy Liz Hickman.
There he is. Jonathan M. Clark, builder and first owner of the handsome stone home that is now the Jonathan Clark House Museum in Mequon, Wisconsin. He was probably born in Vermont—or Lower Canada—probably on November 28, 1812, and he died on September 20, 1857. Before coming to Mequon, he served in the United States Army at Fort Howard from 1833 to 1836. He married Mary Turck, eldest child of Mequon pioneer Peter Turck, on March 15, 1840. They had a large family. We even have a photograph of JMC as an adult (above). In some ways, we know quite a bit about Jonathan M. Clark.
Continue readingWashington County farm output at mid-century
Today’s post is a continuation of our previous post, Harvest Time: 1850, part 1, which introduced us to the agricultural schedules that were part of the U.S decennial federal censuses of 1850-1880. If you missed that post, you might want to click the link and start there. And, as I mentioned in a footnote to Harvest Time: 1850, part 1, if you are wondering “Wait a minute! Mequon—and the Clark House—is in Ozaukee county. Why do you keep referring to Washington county census returns in 1850?” then it’s been too long since you read my April 21, 2016, blog post, Where are we?, in which I explain the convoluted history of the location of the Jonathan Clark House. In 1850 the farm was still in Washington county; by 1860, it was in Ozaukee. Click the link for more on that.
On to the data!
As I mentioned on Wednesday, you can find PDFs of the original 1850 federal census documents (but not the schedules themselves) by going to the Census Bureau’s website. Once there, you’ll note the bureau—for some reason—has not made a separate link to the 1850 Wisconsin statistical report pages. Of course, you can download the entire 1850 census statistical report (and if you can, do!, it’s full of interesting information), but the complete report runs 179MB and you may not want the whole file. No worries! I have made a handy, 5-page PDF extract of the Wisconsin agricultural information1. Just click this link to open and view the complete 1850 Wisconsin Table XI; download and save a copy for yourself, if you like.
On to the 1850 census’s Schedule 4. — Agriculture, for the Clark’s home county of Washington Co., Wisconsin. We’ll present the data in the original order of the schedule. Explanations of terms or schedule categories is taken from the 1853 census report (see note 1, below), pages xxiii-xxiv:
Continue readingWhat did the Clarks grow on their farm?
Today’s and Friday’s posts are inspired by a question about Monday’s Harvest Time post. Reader Laura Rexroth asked: Any records of what they did grow? Animals? How much land did they have? A fine question, and the answer is yes, there are records.
How big was the farm?
We know the size of the Clark farm from information in their land records, including their two federal land patents, a variety of maps from the mid-1800s through the 20th-century, and the Abstract of Title for the Clark property that was prepared by the Ozaukee County Abstract of Title Company, now in the collection of the Jonathan Clark House museum. For most of their time in Mequon, about 1840-1860/61, Jonathan and Mary Clark owned 160 acres of land. Much of this land was originally forested, and I assume that the Clarks cleared and farmed more and more of their 160 acres over time. How much was under cultivation in 1850? For that we need to see:
Continue reading
Clark House Historian 