Various Odds, Ends, News & Such
Chambers, Thomas. Storm-Tossed Frigate, oil on canvas, mid 19th century (c. 1836-1845). National Gallery of Art, gift of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch. Public domain. Click to open larger image in new window.
Continue readingWell, I haven’t actually gone fishing, but I am taking another short break, and I thought I’d illustrate this with a historic drawing or lithograph of some Clark-era folks fishing. A little play on words. Just for fun and all.
The best I could do today—alas—was this 1848 political cartoon:
N. Currier. The Presidential fishing party of. United States, 1848. [New York: Pub. by Peter Smith i.e., Nathaniel Currier, 2 Spruce St., N.Y]. Library of Congress. Click to open larger image in new window; this is the only way to view the text clearly, by the way.
Like all political cartoons of the era it is heavy-handed, visually busy, and full of long-winded text, explaining some now-obscure but highly-contentious issue of the day in the most tedious manner possible. (This is why I usually avoid using 19th-century political cartoons to enliven the discussion here at Clark House Historian.)
What’s it all about?
Anyway, 1848 was an important year for the nation, and for our Mequon settlers. The war with Mexico ended, Wisconsin attained statehood and—closer to home—the Jonathan M. Clark house was built. This cartoon, verbose as it may be, actually covers some key issues of the 1848 U.S. presidential race. Here’s a helpful explanation from the staff at the Library of Congress (I’ve added a few paragraph breaks for easier reading):
Continue readingI must have angered the Gods of Technology.
I managed to find a workaround for my earlier problems with WordPress and then… we (and about 2,800 neighbors) lost our power.
Please pardon this interruption. This is not a regular Clark House Historian post. This is a test.
I’m trying to write my next CHH posts—on the life of Henry Clark—and I’ve run into a weird technical problem at WordPress. My previously drafted and saved words and images are not showing in my editing window. This is occurring on the draft Henry Clark posts and on some of my previously published (and, as far as I can tell, otherwise unchanged and still viewable) posts.
This problem is new to me, and I have sent in a help request to find a solution. I’m writing and publishing this new little post to see what’s still working and to help diagnose what’s going wrong with my WordPress blog platform.
The work continues, here at the Clark House Historian’s state-of-the-art research center…
Spring is here and things are happening at the Jonathan Clark House Museum. All the info is in our latest newsletter. Click the image or this link to open (and save) your own copy of the full pdf:
Clark House Historian is 5 years old today!!
Jonathan Clark House, Mequon, Wisconsin, July, 2015. Photograph by Reed Perkins. Click to open larger image in new window.
Our very first post, announcing the new blog, went live on March 29, 2016. The information in that post has now been revised and expanded into the About and Disclaimers sections of the blog.
The first posts with historical content followed in April, 2016. I still link to one of those posts—Where are we?—when I need to explain the evolving place names and political geography of the Mequon area.
Since the first Clark House Historian posts in 2016 we have learned a lot more about the Clark house, its occupants and their families, friends and neighbors. If you’re new to the blog—or the Jonathan M. Clark House—here are some good places to begin reading (and be sure to click the links in each article):
Continue readingClark House Historian blog is approaching its fifth anniversary, so I’m making some updates to the layout and content of the site. To find the new info click the highlighted links in this post, or the new permanent links in the main menu, under the blog header. Here are the details:
The ABOUT page has been lightly updated, and I’ve added a page of DISCLAIMERS, too.
The big news is that the blog now has an INDEX. With almost five years of research and writing, the blog now has over 140 posts comprising more than 125,000 words. So I’ve begun indexing the blog’s contents. Indexing will take a while—especially once I get to 2020—so please be patient. As of this morning, the index is complete for all of the posts from 2016, and most of 2017.
Continue readingIn spite of several unusually summer-like days, fall has definitely arrived in our corner of Wisconsin.
I’m working on several Clark House history projects at once and, as the saying goes, “there are a lot of moving parts,” and I need more time to get organized.
So no essay today, but here’s a lovely seasonal photo for your enjoyment:
Continue reading
Clark House Historian 