Neighbors

Meet the Neighbors: the Desmond family (part 2)

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 4 Comments

In our previous post, we were introduced to the Desmond family, early Irish immigrants to old Washington/Ozaukee county and neighbors of Jonathan and Mary Clark. To our good fortune, one of the Desmond sons, Humphrey Desmond, wrote a memoir of his father Thomas that includes some unique family genealogy and tales of pioneer days in our area.

If you missed Part 1, I suggest you go ahead and read that post first. Then return here to continue with Part 2 of selections from A Memoir of Thomas Desmond, with a chapter on The Desmond Genealogy, by Humphrey J. Desmond, 77 pages, Milwaukee, 1905. And remember: you can read the complete memoir at this link, which is a part of the admirably organized and comprehensive online genealogy project The Desmond Archives.

Pioneer Days

Chapter 3 of Desmond’s memoir will be of particular interest to CHH readers. It relates various early Mequon events, some involving the Desmond family’s Catholic faith, their Bonniwell neighbors, and the local school that the Bonniwells helped build in the early 1840s. That first “Bonniwell School,” located less than a mile west of the Jonathan Clark house on what is now the southeast corner of Bonniwell and Wauwatosa roads in Mequon, was sketched in 1864 by Evander Bonniwell. The sketch (above) is reproduced here from page 71 of George B. Bonniwell’s comprehensive family history, The Bonniwells: 1000 Years. (Used by permission.)

[31]        III.   PIONEER DAYS

THE "hazard of new fortunes" undertaken by the Desmond family involved the clearing away of woods with the ax of the pioneer and the building of a commodious log house.
    The pioneers of this neighborhood were the Bonniwell brothers, who had settled there about 1835 [sic, 1839], and it was known as the Bonniwell settlement.
    Indians still roamed the forests of southeastern Wisconsin in 1843. My [32] father, then ten years old, alone in the house one day, was visited by a brave to whom he gave a large loaf of bread. The Indian loosened his belt as he ate the loaf, and when it was all gone departed peaceably on his journey.
    There was a log school house to which my father went. Books were not plentiful in those days. He studied his spelling lesson during the noon hour from the book of a desk mate. He had to start at the foot of the class, but one day he got to the head and kept his place.
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Meet the Neighbors: the Desmond family (part 1)

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

In an earlier post, I mentioned a local history source that was previously unknown to me, the Memoir of Thomas Desmond, written by his son Henry Desmond. It was cited by Walter D. Corrigan in the bibliography of his otherwise error-prone and forgettable History of the town of Mequon, Ozaukee County, Wisconsin, brought down to about 1870.

I was intrigued. I already knew that Thomas Desmond and his brother Dennis were pioneer residents of the Town of Mequon and neighbors of the Jonathan Clark family for several decades. The Thomas and Dennis Desmond farm parcels were located in the NW quarter of Section 3, T9N-R21E, Town of Mequon. The Desmond farms, and the adjacent John Corcoran farm, were situated due north of the Jesse Hubbard, Jr., farm, due west of the Ferdinand and Friedrich Groth properties, and immediately adjacent to the northwest corner of the Jonathan and Mary Clark farm, which occupied all of the southeast quarter of section 3.

You can see the Thomas Desmond and Dennis Desmond parcels in the upper left quadrant of this detail from the Shoolmap of the Town of Mequon / School Map of the Town of Mequon, pre-1872, UW-Milwaukee–AGS Digital Map Collection, showing Sec. 3, T9N-R21E. The southeast quarter section is labeled “Widow Clark,” and suggests that the map was made sometime after Jonathan Clark’s death in 1857, but before Mary Turck Clark and her daughters sold the property in 1872. (For more on this unique, useful map, see our post Monday: Map Day! – “Shoolmap” of Mequon, c. 1872.)

A Memoir

A memoir of any early Mequon settler, especially a Clark family neighbor, is always something I’d like to read. But the Desmond memoir was privately published, in 1905, in an edition of only 50 copies, to be distributed only to the immediate family. I checked Worldcat, and it had a citation for the book, but did not know of any libraries that had a copy. Might someone, somewhere, have this little book? Well…

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“Dashing through the snow…”

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 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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Veterans Day, 2025

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

Veterans Day is today. For a perspective on the day—and our early Mequon veterans—here’s a post originally published at Clark House Historian on November 11, 2016, and revised, expanded and republished several times since.

Armistice Day — Veterans Day

One hundred and seven years ago today, at the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month—Paris time—the Armistice of Compiègne took effect, officially ending the fighting on the Western Front and marking the end of World War I, the optimistically named “War to End All Wars.”

In the United States, the commemoration of the war dead and the Allied victory began in 1919 as Armistice Day, by proclamation of President Woodrow Wilson. Congress created Armistice Day as a legal holiday in 1938. Starting in 1945, a World War II veteran named Raymond Weeks proposed that the commemorations of November 11 be expanded to celebrate all veterans, living and dead. In 1954 Congress and President Eisenhower made that idea official, and this is what we commemorate today. There are many veterans with a connection to the Jonathan Clark house. We honor a few of them in this post.

114th Regimental Reunion, May 30, 1897, Norwich, N. Y., Library of Congress [cropped and adjusted]. Many Clark neighbors served during the Civil War, and many remained active in the Grand Army of the Republic, the national organization for Union Army veterans, including these men from rural New York, gathered together in 1897.

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Labor Day – a photo essay

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

UPDATE: This was supposed to go out on Monday. I hit “publish” before the piece was ready. Here’s the updated 2025 version for your reading enjoyment. Sorry for any confusion (and, for you CHH subscribers, the premature email in your inbox).

Monday, September 1st, is Labor Day, the holiday celebrating the working men and women of our nation, and I thought I’d commemorate the day with a lightly-revised re-post of this CHH piece from 2023. This Labor Day, as in 2023, I have to work a shift at our local mercantile establishment. You know, a store kind of like this one, only much bigger, stocked with just about anything you need for modern living:

Like many Americans, I don’t have the day “off” on Monday, and won’t be marching in a parade, but I’d still like to honor the holiday and salute the American worker, past and present. With that in mind, let’s revisit some of the nineteenth-century occupations we’ve talked about previously at Clark House Historian, highlighting a few of the many skills, trades, and occupations common during the Clark House era.

Since it is a holiday, I’m not going to add long commentaries to each photo. Enjoy the photo galleries, and be sure to click each gallery—and photo—to open and peruse larger versions of each image. And click the highlighted links to visit the original CHH posts, filled with lots more information about the different skills, tools, and jobs, and the full image credits.

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Memorial Day, 2025

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / Leave a comment

Lest We Forget

Our annual Memorial Day post, first published in 2020, more relevant with each passing year.

Graves of Unknown Union Soldiers, Memphis National Cemetery, photo by Clayton B. Fraser, (Library of Congress), public domain. Memphis National Cemetery is the final resting place of Mequon’s Watson Peter Woodworth, and almost 14,000 of his Union Army comrades.

Today is the day our nation officially observes Memorial Day. For many Americans, Memorial Day represents “the first day of summer,” and is traditionally celebrated with trips to the lake, picnics, parades, and sales on cars, appliances, and other consumer goods.

But for many of us, Memorial Day remains rooted in its origins as Decoration Day. The first national observance was in 1868, when retired general John A. Logan, commander and chief of the Grand Army of the Republic—the Union veterans’ organization—issued his General Order Number 11, designating May 30 as a memorial day “for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land.”

On this Memorial Day, let’s take a moment to remember what this day truly represents.

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“Dashing through the snow…”

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / Leave a comment

Kimmel and Forster, publishers, “Winter Pleasure in the Country,” circa 1865. National Museum of American History, Peters Prints Collection, Smithsonian Institution.1

Talk of sleighs and sleighing in our recent CHH posts on Snow! and Shoveling out -and other winter chores, plus our January, 2022, essay on Stuff Happens – on a sleigh ride, got me wondering again about winter travel in old Washington/Ozaukee county during the Clarks’ era. 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 ride all the way to Milwaukee? And if you could, how long might that take?

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Shoveling out – and other winter chores

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 4 Comments

We’ve had some snow in my corner of southeastern Wisconsin, several modest snowfalls over the past few days. I’ve had to shovel the walks and driveway at our house a few times this week, and there’s more snow—and shoveling—in the forecast. With that in mind, I thought you might enjoy the snow-related images and stories from a revised edition of this post, which originally appeared here in February, 2023.

Homer, Winslow, A Winter-Morning,—Shovelling Out, 1871. Wood engraving. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Harvey Isbitts.

Winter chores

I empathize with the lads in this 1871 engraving by Winslow Homer. Unlike these fellows, with their (homemade?) wooden shovels, I have a lightweight, sturdy, ergonomic, plastic and metal snow shovel to work with. And although we do get snow in 21st-century Wisconsin, I haven’t had to deal with shoulder-high accumulations like the ones in Homer’s picture since I lived in western Massachusetts in the early 2010s. It looks like our 1871 snow shovelers are dealing with the kind of snowfall that Clark family neighbor Rev. James W. Woodworth described in these January, 1871, diary entries:

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Snow!

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

Hey there! We finally got some snow in southeastern Wisconsin, which prompts me to republish this essay, which originally appeared in early 2021, and has been updated and re-posted several times since. Have fun outside—or enjoy a warm beverage inside—and admire the snowy winter landscape while you can. Cheers!

Snow, and often lots of it, was a feature of Jonathan and Mary Clark’s life in Wisconsin. And if you wanted to go to town or church or visit your neighbors during the snowy Wisconsin winter—or just enjoy a pleasant winter ride in the country—you’d need a sleigh.

Currier, Nathaniel (1813-1888), The road, winter / O. Knirsch, lith., 1853. New York: Published by Currier & Ives. Yale University Art Museum, Whitney Collections of Sporting Art, given in memory of Harry Payne Whitney (B.A. 1894) and Payne Whitney (B.A. 1898) by Francis P. Garvan (B.A. 1897) June 2, 1932. Public domain. Click to open larger image in new window.1

We don’t know if the Clarks owned a sleigh while they lived in Mequon. I suspect they 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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