Random Blog Stuff

Various Odds, Ends, News & Such

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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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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Indexing. Again!

/ Genealogist & Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

Clark House Historian is about to begin its tenth year of investigating, interpreting and sharing the stories of the Clarks, their relatives, neighbors, friends, and the world in which they lived. With that in mind, I’ve been looking through the blog, and thinking about making a few, useful updates to the site. Chief among these would be a decent, searchable index to all those posts.

(Still) “under construction“…

From our first post in late-March, 2016, through early March, 2026, I’ve researched, written and published almost 500 Clark House Historian posts comprising about a half-million words, and illustrated with hundreds of historic maps, photographs, lithographs and other images. That’s a lot of information to organize and search.

So even though the blog has a decent SEARCH BY KEYWORDS(s) function, and each post is kind-of, sort-of indexed with SEARCH BY CATEGORY labels and SEARCH BY TAGS (mostly tagged by date or decade), it has become more difficult to find specific information and archived CHH source materials than I’d prefer. So in 2021 I started indexing the blog. Unfortunately, in the five (!) years since 2021 there’s been a long pause in indexing because, frankly, I don’t much care for indexing.

What I really need is an intelligent team of trained, experienced and eagle-eyed indexers, like these women at the catalog cards processing department of the Library of Congress in the late 1910s.

Harris & Ewing, photographer. Librarians working with catalog cards in the Processing Department of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. [detail]. [Between 1917 and 1920?]. Library of Congress.

Unfortunately, I can’t afford an intelligent team of trained, experienced, and detail-oriented indexers like those women at the Library of Congress in the late 1910s. So—alas!—it’s up to me to get the indexing project moving again, bit by bit. (But, as my astute, dear father used to say, “that’s a fine speech, son…” so we’ll see.)

Anyway, if you’ve looked through the blog’s INDEX, tried the SEARCH BY KEYWORD function, and you’ve sorted by CATEGORIES, and still can’t find the CHH post, image, or other information that you’re looking for, please let me know via the blog’s CONTACT form and I’ll do my best to help.

And if you’d like to look at the most recent additions to the CHH INDEX, click “Read More” or “Continue reading” for the details…

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CHH Year in Review, 2025

/ Genealogist & Historian Reed Perkins. / 7 Comments

Harrison, Gabriel, “California News,” Daguerreotype, c. 1850. Metropolitan Museum of Art

What’s the news? I’ve gathered the expert—and stylish—editorial staff of Clark House Historian (see above) and together we proudly present the latest installment of our more-or-less annual Blog Year in Review!

Let’s begin with some blog statistics for 2025:

In some ways, 2025 was not a particularly productive year for CHH. I only managed to publish 35 posts, averaging less than one per week. Most posts were new material, but some were revised repeats of favorite seasonal and holiday topics, such as Christmas, Memorial Day, Veterans Day and such.

Meanwhile, “behind the scenes,” I was busy with some non-blog research projects, one focused on the post-Fred Beckmann history of the Wisconsin House building in Cedarburg, and another centered on the history and construction of the Jonathan Clark House.

Not surprisingly, with the number of CHH posts down, reader engagement dropped also, to a low of only 3 “likes” and 34 comments for the year. Just to be clear, I really do like to hear from y’all, so let me encourage you “like,” comment, and ask questions more often in 2026. Even if I’m working on a larger, longer, research project—which tends to slow my online blog production—I really enjoy reading and replying to your queries.

On the other hand, the number of blog subscribers increased in the past year. Clark House Historian currently has 86 subscribers. If you’d like to comment or subscribe, but don’t know how, click this link for all the “how to” details.

Monthly readership

As you can see (below), even though the number of new posts in 2025 was lower than in previous years, total blog readership was up substantially over 2024:

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Finding what you want: a few tips for readers

/ Genealogist & Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

Sometimes a blog is like a labyrinth…

JCH Bonniwell family Bible, MS inscription “John” and drawing of a Labyrinth, First […] Concordance, sig. A1 verso (detail)

I’m looking forward to blogging more regularly, and I hope you enjoy the upcoming posts. But I’ve been publishing Clark House Historian for almost ten years (!), and I know it can be hard to navigate the blog and find the particular historical information, photos, maps and other images that you might be looking for. Today’s post has a few tips to help you make your way through the twists and turns of the Clark House Historian information labyrinth.

Tip No. 1: Click the links!

If you’d like to view a larger, clearer version of almost any image on the blog: click the image (or, sometimes, the link in the caption), and a new full-size image will open in a new window. Other links (highlighted in the blog’s signature minty-green color) will connect you with related blog posts and online sources for further information.

And by the way, you can read the blog on your phone and open and zoom in on the photos, drawings, maps and other images. But I create the CHH posts on a device with a good-sized screen, and I recommend viewing on the largest screen that you can.

Finally, and most importantly, be sure to click the Continue reading—> link, typically found after the first image and paragraph or two. There is a lot more to be found “below the fold.”

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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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Random Bits o’ Holiday News…

/ Genealogist & Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

Well, whaddya know? Christmas is just around the corner…

JCH Parlour with Christmas tree and decor. Photo credit Reed Perkins

Holiday Lights 2024

December 2 & 3, 2024, brought us the latest edition of our Holiday Lights gathering of Clark house friends old and new. There was good food, tasty beverages, lively conversation, and fine seasonal music, all dished up in the unique ambience of our historic Jonathan Clark House Museum.

As we do every year, the house was decorated with appropriate 1840s-style decorations, including the table-top Christmas tree and ornaments, and the evergreen bough decorations on the window sills, shown above.

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November! already?

/ Genealogist & Historian Reed Perkins.

The Clark House Historian at his desk, wondering where October went…1

It’s been over a month since our last Clark House Historian post! Sorry about that. It’s not that I haven’t been busy with JCH writing and organizing. I have been. But most of my work for the last month has been done behind the scenes as the Jonathan Clark House graphic designer and webmaster.

For a good roundup of what’s been going on, please head over to our JCH official website and click on the News & Events page for details.

And that’s not all…

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Clark House News – June, 2024

/ Genealogist & Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

There’s a lot going on at the Jonathan Clark House this summer! Here’s a quick look at two upcoming June celebrations, as well as information about our other 2024 summer events. Be sure to click Continue reading (below) to see all the details.

Pie on the Patio 2024

As a reminder, Pie on the Patio, our annual salute to donors and Friends of the Jonathan Clark House will be held at the museum this Wednesday, June 12, from 5:00-7:00 p.m. There is limited space for the event and RSVPs were due June 5. But if you have questions or last-minute changes in plans, please contact executive director Nina Look via email at jchmuseum@gmail.com or call 262-618-2051.

And if you don’t want to miss next year’s Pie on the Patio, become a Clark House donor, today! Just click this link to our JCH donor page, or scan the QR code, below, and scroll down to the Donate Online info. And thank you for your support!

This Saturday! – Heritage Day 2024

Put away the electronics and experience life in Mequon-Thiensville as it was in the 1850s. On Saturday, June 15, from Noon to 3:00 p.m., the Jonathan Clark House Museum hosts its annual Heritage Day, where everyone steps back in time to learn more about early settler life. Each event features hands-on activities and fun for all ages. Admission is free and open to the public. Come see us at the corner of Cedarburg and Bonniwell Roads in Mequon!

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