Neighbors

The original “laptop”

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 6 Comments

This is an expanded—and lavishly illustrated—version of a piece that first appeared in the Summer | August 2023 edition of the Jonathan Clark House Newsletter. I hope you enjoy the extra information, images, and the vintage writing tips.
UPDATED: August 27, 2023, to clarify provenance of Robert Beveridge’s writing desk.

One of the ways we collect, preserve and share the history of the Jonathan Clark House and the early settlers of Mequon and Thiensville is by acquiring and interpreting furniture, tools, clothing, and various accessories that would have been familiar to the Clarks and their neighbors. One particularly fine item in our collection is this box, a treasured heirloom generously donated to the Clark House collection by JCH Friend Frederick Bock.

Photo courtesy of Tom Gifford (2023)

When closed it measures about 16 x 6 x 10 inches. It is made of wood, stained a rich golden brown. On the top is a brass plaque inscribed Rt.[Robert] Beveridge / 1854. And there’s a lock on the front. Why is that?

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Bonniwell background: clues from the Great Fire reports

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins.

Today I’d like to share two rare and unusual official documents, and note how there are early 19th-century Bonniwell family genealogical clues hidden in each.

The Bonniwells and related families in Kent, 1667-1832

The image below is of St. Mary’s Church, Chatham, much as it looked at the time of Alfred T. Bonniwell’s christening there in 1826. It’s likely that the Bonniwells regularly attended services here during their years in Chatham. St. Mary’s has had a long and eventful history as a parish church, and has been reconstructed several times.1

Engraving based on original art by W. Dadson, in Robert Langton’s The Childhood and Youth of Charles Dickens, Manchester, 1883, page 72. GoogleBooks, accessed 1 Aug. 2023.

A surprising number of our early Mequon immigrants had ancestors in southeast England’s venerable Kent county. Early Mequon settlers (and their spouses) from the Ashby, Bonniwell, Dunning, Eastree, Hills, Long, Moss, Munn, Smith and Whitehead families all had roots in Kent, many of them in or around the town of Chatham. For an introductory overview of this, see Monday: Map Day! – the Bonniwells in Kent, featuring a very cool map of the county from 1665, with added annotations that indicate many of the of the family’s various Kent residences, christenings, marriages, and burials over the subsequent decades.2

Family history before the census of 1841

The first modern, “all name,” census of England was enumerated in 1840 and published in 1841 and, as with every succeeding decennial census, the 1841 Census of England and Wales is full of useful information for historians and genealogists. But the Bonniwells left England for North America in 1832, almost a decade before the 1841 census was enumerated. How do we reconstruct and understand family relationships and local history, especially on the female branches of the family tree, before 1841? Today we’ll look at two obscure bureaucratic reports that may offer some useful clues.

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At my desk, writing…

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

Sorry for the lack of blog posts lately. My week began with several days devoted to an unexpected and very stressful issue that has now been resolved (or, at least, much improved) and I am researching and writing once again.

I’ll have more history for you here presently, and I have a brief but interesting piece coming up shortly in the next Jonathan Clark House newsletter. What’s that about? Let’s just say that something in today’s portrait of a rather posh Philadelphia silversmith is more relevant to the Clarks’ era—and the Jonathan Clark House Museum collection—than you might think.

Thanks for reading and see you soon!

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Bonniwell Background: a novel nautical note

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

I’m still tidying up a longer post on the Great Chatham Fires of 1800 and 1820 and the genealogical clues that may be found in the post-fire documents published in 1801 and 1821. Meanwhile, I learned a new word and thought you might be interested, namely:

A Hoy

The report on the 1800 fire stated that a number of Chatham merchants lost a substantial amount of goods on a hoy. You’re probably familiar with the nautical greeting “Ahoy!”—the sailor’s equivalent of “Hello” or “Hey there!” But this hoy is a noun. What was a hoy? It turns out to be…

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Bonniwell background: more Chatham links & docs

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 3 Comments

I’m still thinning out my backlog of Bonniwell-related documents that currently crowd my computer desktop. Today’s post includes some multimedia links, too. I hope you enjoy them.

A long, narrow, disagreeable, ill-built town…

Unlike the glowing prose of the description of Chatham we discussed earlier in Bonniwell background: Chatham, Kent 1832, not everyone was impressed by the Bonniwell’s home town, at least not in the late-1700s. For example, Edward Hasted (1732-1812), in his monumental History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent (second edition, vol. 4, Canterbury, 1798, pp. 191-226) had this to say:

THE TOWN OF CHATHAM, the greatest part of which has been built since the reign of queen Elizabeth, adjoins to that of Rochester, which, with Stroud [sic, Strood], makes one long street of more than two miles in length, of which Chatham is one, being commonly called the Three Towns, through which the high road leads from London to Dover, as above mentioned.

It is situated close to the bank of the Medway for about half a mile, after which the river leaving the town flows north-north east. It is like most sea ports, a long, narrow, disagreeable, ill-built town, the houses in general occupied by those trades adapted to the commerce of the shipping and seafaring persons, the Victualling-office, and the two breweries, and one or two more houses, being the only tolerable built houses in it.

The 12 volumes of the second edition of Hasted’s complete magnum opus have been digitized and made available at British History Online. The quoted bits above are a brief excerpt from Hasted’s almost 9,000 words devoted to the parish history of Chatham. Click the link for online access, or download a PDF copy here.

I discovered Hasted’s sour appraisal of 1798 Chatham while watching an interesting YouTube video devoted to the history of two major disasters that befell the town—and our Bonniwell and Hills families—in the early 1800s:

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Bonniwell background: Chatham, Kent 1832

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

Time for some housekeeping. I’m trying to wrap up my “brief” survey of the documentary life of Mequon pioneer (and Clark House brother-in-law) Alfred T. Bonniwell, and I need to thin out my collection of “not-specifically-Alfred, but still interesting and Bonniwell-related” documents that currently crowd my “to do” list. Today’s gem is a view and description of the Bonniwell family’s hometown of Chatham as it was in 1832, the year they left England and sailed to North America:

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Thomas Day: farmer, prospector, preacher

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins.

I’m still collating information about how and when the members of the Bonniwell gold rush expedition(s) returned to Wisconsin. I hope to have the full list posted here, shortly. In the meanwhile, I thought you might be interested in learning more about Clark family neighbor Thomas Day. He was a member of the Bonniwell 1849 by-land-and-sea expedition to the California gold fields and was a friend and colleague to Clark House neighbor and Methodist evangelist William W. Woodworth. Thomas Day’s life story sheds light on the early Washington/Ozaukee county settler experience, and illuminates various aspects of immigration, religion, and family life in pioneer days.

As we begin, be sure to note that our subject, Thomas Day, immigrated to Wisconsin from England in 1846, and is not directly related to the Tennessee-born, 1836 Mequon pioneer Isham Day.

Rev. Thomas Day, 1809 – 1901

Let’s start at the end, with the longer of two versions of Thomas Day’s obituary, as published on page 3 of the Indianapolis News, Sunday, April 21, 1901:

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Isham Day: Civil War casualty

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 5 Comments

Isham Day was one of the very first white pioneers to settle in the future Town of Mequon, Wisconsin Territory. I first wrote about Isham Day, and his historic house—later Mequon’s first post office, and also known as the Yankee Settlers’ Cottage—in an earlier post, River Walk. You might want to read that before continuing with today’s essay.

Isham Day was not only one of the first settlers in this area, he was active member of the small but growing community in what would become Washington and, later, Ozaukee counties. There is a lot to say about his role in the early decades of pioneer life in the Clarks’ neighborhood, some of which is already known through early local histories and various federal and local primary sources. (And he appears in six different posts here at Clark House Historian.)

One thing that is less well known is what happened to Isham Day after those early days in Milwaukee and Mequon. I wanted to know and, after an extended search, I found out. In many ways, it’s a story of the stereotypical moving-ever-westward American pioneer experience. But it’s also a story of a man trying to live a peaceful life in the midst of violence and rebellion. In our recent post, Memorial Day, 2023, we remembered some of our local men that fought and died to preserve the Union and end the scourge of slavery in “the land of the free.” Today we examine one of the many civilian casualties of that conflict: Isham Day.

Isham Day house (“Yankee Settler’s Cottage”), built 1839, Mequon, Wisconsin. The oldest house in Ozaukee county still on its original foundation. Photo credit: Anna Perkins, 2021.

Please note: sensitive or younger readers may find some of the language and events documented below to be disturbing.

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Memorial Day, 2023

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 5 Comments

Lest We Forget

Our annual Memorial Day post, first published in 2020. Updated for 2023 with new information about Evander B. Bonniwell’s service.

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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Farewell to California! The Bonniwell party returns (part 4)

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 5 Comments

If you’re just joining us, you may want to read the first three parts of this series: (part 1), (part 2), and especially (part 3) before continuing with today’s Part 4.

April, 1851: Alfred T. and (George? or Charles?) Bonniwell to NYC

Based on the documents that I have been able to locate so far, the next members of the Bonniwell expeditions to return from California were Alfred T. Bonniwell and one of his older brothers.

Like Henry Bonniwell and P.M. Johnson at the end of 1850, in the spring of 1851 Alfred and his brother had a choice of routes and providers for the return home from San Francisco.

“Vessels Advertised,” for Panama and New York City, San Francisco Daily Alta California, January 10, 1851, page 1.

Like Henry Bonniwell and P.M. Johnson before them, Alfred and his brother appear to have chosen to travel on the ships of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company. They probably sailed on the steamer Sarah Sands from San Francisco to Panama (City). then crossed the isthmus of Panama (via some combination of horse, mule and/or canoe) and boarded the U.S.Mail Steamer Cherokee for the trip to New York:

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