RBOH

Winter fun, 1868

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

Updated Feb. 11, 2022, with information about Milwaukee’s “original Ice Bear,” Henry Kroeger (see comments, below).

The 24th Winter Olympic Games are now under way in Beijing, with a dizzying profusion of modern sliding and gliding winter sports. Of course, outdoor winter games and sports pre-date the modern Olympics by hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Among the oldest and most popular of these is ice skating.

Homer, Winslow, “Winter” — A Skating Scene, from Harper’s Weekly, January 25, 1868. Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Ray Austrian Collection, gift of Beatrice L. Austrian, Caryl A. Austrian and James A. Austrian. Public domain, CC0. Click to open larger image in new window

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Stuff Happens – on a sleigh ride!

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins.

In Jonathan and Mary Clark’s era, if you needed to get somewhere during the winter—for business or for pleasure—you probably rode in a a horse-drawn sleigh. Travel in a sleigh could be fun, even exhilarating, but was not without its perils, most of which came from inadequately maintained roads and trails:

Bennett, W. J. , Engraver, and George Harvey. Winter. No. 5., Impeded Travelers in a Pine Forest, Upper Canada / engraved from the original painting by G. Harvey A.N.A., New York, 1841. Color aquatint. Library of Congress. Click to open larger image in new window.

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Hail, Smiling morn! – 2022 edition

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins.

Happy New Year to all, and best wishes that 2022 will be an improvement on the past year. (A low bar, I know.) Anyway, when I first published this post, on January 1, 2021, I wrote: I’m almost done with my research on the second half of the 1843 concert by the Milwaukie Beethoven Society. (If you missed our earlier posts on that concert, links are here and here.) But it’s New Year’s Day, and I’m not quite done writing about “Part Second.”

Well, it turns out that “not quite done” was an optimistic estimate, as I became distracted by so many other research topics and posts and never got around to discussing the second part of the Milwaukee Beethoven Society’s concert. New Year’s Day is here again, and I’m still not done, alas, but I have not forgotten and—with luck—I will finish that post some time this winter.

A spot of Spofforth to ring in the New Year…

Meanwhile, let’s start the New Year on a cheerful note by reprising last year’s festive musical selection, drawn from that second part of the Milwaukee Beethoven Society’s 1843 premiere concert:

Milwaukee Weekly Sentinel March 15 1843, page 2. Click to open larger image in new window.

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Holiday Fun in NYC, 1864

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

It’s the week after Christmas. Perhaps you have family or friends visiting from out of town. If you have children, they’re home from school. How to keep them entertained? If you lived near New York City in 1864, you were in luck. Barnum’s American Museum was ready with spectacular and unique holiday exhibits for the whole family, all for the low, low, price of 25 cents for adults, 15 cents for children under age ten!

Barnum’s American Museum. Christmas and New Year holiday bill, 1864. [New York: Wynkoop, Hallenbeck & Thomas, Book and Job Printers, 113 Fulton St. N.Y], Library of Congress. Click to see larger, easier to read, image.

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View on the Catskill – Early Autumn (1836-1837)

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins.

I’m still catching my breath after writing Thursday’s big post on the life of Caroline Clark’s mentor, John G. McKindley. We’ll return to Caroline (Clark) Woodward, and see how her time with McKindley influenced her adult life and work, in just a bit.

In the meantime, here’s a lovely fall scene that would have looked very familiar to Mary (Turck) Clark’s mother Rachael (Gay) Turck, and to Rachael’s Gay and Van Loon / Van Loan parents and ancestors:

Cole, Thomas, View on the Catskill—Early Autumn, 1836-1837. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, gift in memory of Jonathan Sturges by his children, 1895. Public domain. Click to open larger image in new window.

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Still getting the lay of the land…

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins.

I’m still sifting through a huge (mostly digital) pile of Caroline M. Clark and William W. Woodward sources and trying to organize them into a series of coherent and interesting posts for you. Sort of like assembling a bunch of hastily-drawn field surveys and turning them into accurate topographical maps or railroad construction plans:

Unknown photographer, W.W. Wright, Chf. Eng. & … Mil. RRds. United States, circa 1861 and 1866. Library of Congress. Click to open larger image in new window.

At least my desk is indoors.

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But first, a word from our sponsor…

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins.

Caroline (Clark) Woodward, in our first Clark family endorsement!

Here’s something new for Clark House Historian: a commercial endorsement from one of Jonathan and Mary Clark’s children! In June, 1900, our own Caroline M. (Clark) Woodward recommended travel on the Burlington Route in this newspaper ad…

Woodward, Caroline in railroad advertisement, Red Lodge Picket, Red Lodge, Montana, June 1, 1900, page 3. Click to open larger image in new window.

Mrs. C. M. Woodward, well known in W.C.T.U. circles sends us this cheering communication.

“We are enthusiastic in praise of the Burlington tourist sleepers. Berths furnished with hair mattresses, good pillows, clean linen, nice blankets, same as in Pullman sleeper. The car was kept clean and comfortable the entire trip. Passengers of an excellent class.”

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A Bonniwell Bonus: Views of Ramsgate and Chatham, England

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

UPDATED, Oct. 4, 2021, with a few minor edits and to add an additional footnote.

I’m still working on some longer posts; they should be ready soon. Meanwhile, I thought you might enjoy two lovely images, beginning with this nineteenth-century print, a view that would have been very familiar to a surprising number of our early Mequon immigrants:

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Autumn in “the West” – 1841

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

Hey! Fall fell on Wednesday, September 22, this year, and I missed it. (Just having too much fun blogging about How’d they get here? Detroit to Ft. Howard, 1834, I suppose.)

These days—living and working inside our climate controlled, electrically illuminated spaces—it’s easy to miss nature’s seasonal changes. But you can be sure that our early Clark House residents, friends, and neighbors didn’t miss the start of autumn. Rural life was—and is—centered around the progression of the seasons, and autumn brought new farm and household chores to suit the changing weather and decreasing daylight.

So pile up your haystacks, sharpen and oil your tools before you store them in the barn, fill up the root cellar with food for the next six months or more, and keep chopping firewood for the winter woodpile. It’s time to mark the end of summer and the start of fall with a handsome seasonal image from the Clark’s era:

Autumn, No. 4: Gigantic sycamores. An ox team crossing the ford. Owl Creek, Ohio

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RBOH – “How’d they get here?” edition…

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins.

Here’s another hodgepodge of Random Bits Of History. Today’s items were found during our research for other posts in our “How’d they get there?” series.

More on JMC’s path from New York to Fort Howard, 1833

In our post How’d they get here? – JMC to Ft.Howard, 1833., I surmised that new army recruit Jonathan M. Clark mustered in at Ft. Niagara, New York, and then went from there to join his regiment at Fort Howard, Green Bay, Michigan (later Wisconsin) Territory. I’ve since discovered two newspaper items that support that surmise. Here’s one from Spring, 1833, about five months before JMC signed his enlistment papers in Utica, New York:

[Recruits travel from Ft Niagara to Buffalo], dateline Buffalo, May 22, reprinted in [Philadelphia] Daily Chronicle, May 29, 1833, page 3. genealogybank.com. Click image to open image in new window.

On May 22, 1833, ninety fresh U.S. Army recruits marched from the army’s personnel depot at Ft. Niagara to “Tonawanta,” presumably the New York village of Tonawanda, located where Tonawanda Creek, the final stretch of the westbound Erie Canal, meets the Niagara River:

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