Ozaukee County

RBOH: some Beckmann & Cedarburg updates

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins.

Revised 17 February 2025 to include some additional material about my Beckmann-related talk at the Cedarburg History Museum in Spring, 2023.

Cedarburg News, October 14, 1885, page 1

I’ve been spending time with historic local newspapers online, searching for those tasty tidbits of local news that never quite make it into the history books, but are often found in the 19th-century local press. Today I was browsing through 1880s to early-1900s issues of the Cedarburg News, Fred. W. Horn, publisher, and found some interesting random bits o’ history that are connected to the Clark House and to some work I’ve done for the Cedarburg History Museum.

Fred. Beckmann and kin

You may remenber a post I wrote back in July, 2020, about newly-married German immigrant Fred. Beckmann, who farmed and lived on the Jonathan Clark property from 1868 until 1873, at which time he and his growing family moved to Cedarburg, where he then owned and ran the Wisconsin House hotel for the better part of the next four decades. I followed that up with an April, 2023 presentation at the Cedarburg History Museum, where I spoke about the life and the extended circle of family, business associates and friends of Fred. Beckmann. His story connects the hardscrabble early days of our area’s Yankee, Irish and German pioneers (Jonathan and Mary Clark’s generation) with the following generation of established and settled German-American farmers, business owners and civic leaders, such as himself. And Fred also connected and illuminated the story of the Jonathan Clark House with those of nearby Hamilton—and its Concordia Mill—and the development of downtown Cedarburg in the 19th-century.

That 2023 presentation was followed by a March, 2024, illustrated talk I gave at the Cedarburg History Museum as part of their big 2024 Civil War exhibition and lecture series. My subject was “From the ‘Burg to the Battlefield…and Back: Cedarburg’s Beckmann Family and the Civil War.” In my talk, I tried to take a more personal and local look at the war by examining the military service of few of Fred. Beckmann’s Cedarburg relatives, including his brother Charles Beckmann, future brother-in-law, Charles Gottschalk, and future father-in-law Henry Hachfeld/Hackfeldt.

Well, I wasn’t really looking for more info on Fred. Beckmann today, but I stumbled across some interesting things, and thought I’d share them with you here…

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Santa came!

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

Image credit: see note 1

Remember my “Dear Santa” wish list post from last month? Well, Santa came, in the form of a cheery email with exciting historical source news from Clark House supporter, eagle-eyed historian, and all-around great friend Ellen Hickman.2

Ellen’s email, I’m happy to report, has opened new pathways to locate all kinds of otherwise hard-to-search primary and secondary historical records and documents from the Clarks’ era. Since receiving it, I’ve been chasing after documents down one formerly-obscure research “rabbit hole” after another, with some gratifying results…

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Veterans Day, 2024

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins.

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. These stories, by the way, are not the only stories of local veterans that I have collected. My recent research has discovered some amazing stories of German immigrant and Black American soldiers that fought for the Union—and Ozaukee county—as part of Wisconsin’s Civil War experience. And I still have much to learn about the Civil War service of Mary Clark’s brother, Benjamin Turck and the post-war travails of Persie Clark’s husband, the war-wounded U.S. Navy veteran and pensioner Henry D. Gardner. I hope to tell those stories here, at Clark House Historian, in the near future.

Armistice Day

One hundred and six years ago, on the eleventh day, of the eleventh month, at the eleventh hour—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.

Jonathan Clark, Henry Clark, and the U.S. Army

Jonathan M. Clark (1812-1857) enlisted as a Private in Company K, Fifth Regiment of the U. S. Army, and served at Ft. Howard, Michigan (later Wisconsin) Territory, from 1833 until mustering out, as Sargent Jonathan M. Clark, in 1836. In the 1830s, Fort Howard was on the nation’s northwestern frontier. Jonathan’s Co. K spent much of the summers of 1835 and 1836 cutting the military road across Wisconsin, from Ft. Howard toward Ft. Winnebago, near modern Portage, Wisconsin.

Fort Howard, Wisconsin Territory, circa 1855, from Marryat, Frederick, and State Historical Society Of Wisconsin. “An English officer’s description of Wisconsin in 1837.” Madison: Democrat Printing Company, State Printers, 1898. Library of Congress. Click to open larger image in new window.

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Labor Day – a photo essay

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins.

Today 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 piece from 2023.

This Labor Day, I’ll be at home, working on my upcoming lectures for the state DAR and the Cedarburg History Museum. Last year, I had to work 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:

I don’t really have the day “off” today—too much writing to do—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 click each gallery to open 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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JMC: The missing years, 1836-1839

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

I’m still on the search for Jonathan M. Clark’s parents and other kin somewhere in the early-19th-century wilderness of northern Vermont and southern Québec. I hope to publish more about that here in the near future.

As part of that project, I’ve spent quite a bit of time over the past few months organizing and re-examining the many research materials that I’ve gathered about JMC and his world, and I’ve constructed a whole bunch of genealogies for early Vermont, New Hampshire, and Lower Canada families named Clark that turn out—alas!—not to be related to our Jonathan M. Clark.

More mysteries…

Along with the mystery of JMC’s still-unknown family and childhood, Clark House museum director Nina Look and I have been trying to chase down some rumors that suggest Jonathan Clark may have spent his three years between mustering out of the U.S. Army (in 1836), and purchasing land at the land office in Milwaukee (in late 1839), as a surveyor in or near the area around Fort Winnebago, Columbia County, Wisconsin Territory. At the moment, that story remains a mystery, too. I’ll let you know if we find out more.

Anyway, with all these facts, rumors and mysteries—and many, many others—rolling around in my head, I thought it might be useful to outline JMC’s life in a handy, chronological timeline. Here’s a draft of that timeline, including what we do—and don’t—know about Jonathan M. Clark’s whereabouts and activities during his lifetime, as of July 1, 2024. I’ve included links to some relevant Clark House Historian posts where possible; please click on them for more information.

Childhood & Youth

November 28, 1812, (possibly, 1811) born to unknown parents, in or near Derby, VT, or Stanstead, Lower Canada

• Late-1812 to early-1831: JMC’s childhood whereabouts and activities unknown for 18+ years, with one possible exception:

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Memorial Day, 2024

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins.

Lest We Forget

Our annual Memorial Day post, first published in 2020. Updated for 2024 with new information about the Civil War service of Isham and Emily (Bigelow) Day’s eldest child, Cpl. James Lemon Day (1834-1863).

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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The farm garden

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins.

It’s already the second week of May, 2024, and summertime will soon be here. At our southeastern Wisconsin home the first spring flowers are done, and the next round of blossoms have been blooming for a week or two. The peas will soon be in the ground, and we already harvested enough rhubarb to make two and a half small jars of jam. The tomato and pepper seedlings and the squashes will go in soon, and I need to put up a trellis or two so we can start the big patch of green beans. So even though it’s “early” by the standards of previous years, we’ve got gardening on the mind here at the Historian’s house, and I thought you might enjoy a slightly-belated repost of this annual favorite, which first appeared here in April, 2021. Cheers!

Planning the garden

It’s early April, and the growing season is not far off. For a farmer like Jonathan M. Clark, it’s a little early yet for plowing and sowing, but not too early to make plans and sharpen the tools. For a farmer’s wife, like Mary (Turck) Clark, it’s not too soon to think about the farm garden, its crops and layout.

Garden at the Turck-Schottler House, 1870s Hessian Immigrant Farm, Old World Wisconsin. Photo credit Reed Perkins, 2022.1

I don’t know if Mary and Jonathan were regular readers of the popular and affordable farmers’ almanacs of their era; I wouldn’t be surprised if they were. There were many to chose from. Perhaps they had a copy of something like:

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Lost in the underbrush…

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins.

Advertisement, “Choppers Wanted,” Milwaukee Sentinel, August 27, 1839, page 3.

After years of searching for original reports and drawings or photographs of early Wisconsin road construction, I find myself entangled among piles of information and images on just that topic. Now, the challenge is to organize the best of this material into a few CHH blog posts and wrap up—for now—our most recent excursion along Wisconsin’s earliest roads.1

Like contractor George E. Graves in Sauk Harbor [Port Washington] in 1834 (above), I could probably use the assistance of some (digital) “axe-men” to clear my way forward. Perhaps some hearty fellows such as these…

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Monday: Map Day! – One more (updated) look at Ouisconsin Territory, 1836

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 3 Comments

Today’s Monday: Map Day! revisits and makes a correction to an interesting map that we first discussed here on October 29, 2017, and then re-visited on July 11, 2020. And for unknown reasons, that original 2017 post—according to my monthly WordPress statistics report—was the most-viewed post on this site for the month of January, 2024, with 341 views (!).

Burr, David H. Map of the Northern Parts of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois and Michigan and that part of the Ouisconsin Territory lying East of the Mississippi River, 1836, detail of title & author. Library of Congress.

The 2020 re-post was originally conceived as a kind of addendum to our June-July, 2020, multi-part discussion of the earliest Wisconsin territorial, state, and federal censuses. It also served to locate Jonathan M. Clark in Wisconsin Territory during his U.S. Army service from September, 1833, to September 19, 1836.

Today’s post includes one particular correction that I’ve been meaning to make for a while. When I added my original annotations to a detail of this map (in red), in 2017, I made an error. I mislabeled Sgt. Jonathan M. Clark’s location at the time he mustered out of service, a temporary army camp along the under-construction military road from Fort Howard (Green Bay) to Fort Winnebag0 (Portage). JMC’s muster-out location was always referred to in the records of the Fifth Regiment of Infantry as “Camp Hamilton.” For some reason, when I made my annotated detail map, I incorrectly labeled this place “Ft. Hamilton.” A minor error, but worth correcting , especially now that this map is receiving fresh attention.1

It’s 1836. Where’s…Wisconsin?

In September, 1836, Sgt. Jonathan M. Clark was discharged from the U.S. Army at “Camp Hamilton,” Wisconsin Territory, after serving his three-year term of service with Co. K, Fifth Regiment of Infantry.2  One year later, in the autumn of 1837, Jonathan’s future wife Mary Turck would make the long trip from Palmyra, New York, to Milwaukee and finally Mequon, Washington County, Wisconsin, with her parents Peter and Rachael Turck and six younger siblings. By the end of 1840 Jonathan and Mary would be married and starting their family in Mequon.

That seems simple enough, until you take a moment to wonder how much Jonathan—or especially Mary and her family—knew about this new Wisconsin Territory.  Jonathan had been in the territory since October, 1833, mostly on post at Ft. Howard. In the last year or so of his service he was busy cutting trees and building bridges for the military road along the Fox River waterway from Ft. Howard (Green Bay) towards Ft. Winnebago (near modern Portage). As a road-building soldier, Jonathan might have done some surveying and seen—or helped draw—a variety of maps of the military road and its vicinity. But for a better overview of this new territory, Jonathan or Mary might have sought out a map such as this:

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RBOH: Weston & Western, Loomis & Loomer, and how do you pronounce Isham?

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins.

Time for a few Random Bits of History: Early Mequon Settlers’ Disambiguation Edition.

John Weston & John Western

Mequon’s first postmaster, John Weston, is mentioned many times in the essential local history book, the History of Washington and Ozaukee Counties, Wisconsin … Illustrated. Western Historical Publishing Co., Chicago, 1881. Using the “Find” function on my PDF copy of the book,1 I found results for “John Weston” on pages 475, 476, 523, 524 and 545.

There is also an entry for “T. Weston” among the names on the “First Poll-List of Washington County” on page 316. I am confident that this is a typographical error and that “T. Weston” is actually John Weston.

The same source also records, among the early area settlers, one “John Western,” on pages 316, 477 and 478. Is this the same man as John Weston? I have carefully compared a number of sources, including the early minutes of the county road supervisors and deeds in the Washington/Ozaukee county deed books, and I am convinced that during the early years of settlement in the Mequon-Milwaukee area, “John Weston” and “John Western” are the same person, namely John Weston, born in New York about 1800, and married to Deborah Milliner in Milwaukee County in April, 1838. I’ll have examples from the documents that explain my reasoning in a future post.

Fun fact: Mary (Turck) Clark’s father, (Baptist) “Elder” Peter Turck, was the officiant at the Weston-Milliner wedding in 1838. It was the fortieth marriage recorded in the first volume of marriage records for Milwaukee county (and its still-attached for judicial purposes neighbor counties, including old Washington/Ozaukee county).2

With the Weston & Western mystery solved—for the moment—let’s see what other bits of error and confusion we can clear up…

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