Sources

Meet the Neighbors: the Desmond family (part 2)

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 4 Comments

In our previous post, we were introduced to the Desmond family, early Irish immigrants to old Washington/Ozaukee county and neighbors of Jonathan and Mary Clark. To our good fortune, one of the Desmond sons, Humphrey Desmond, wrote a memoir of his father Thomas that includes some unique family genealogy and tales of pioneer days in our area.

If you missed Part 1, I suggest you go ahead and read that post first. Then return here to continue with Part 2 of selections from A Memoir of Thomas Desmond, with a chapter on The Desmond Genealogy, by Humphrey J. Desmond, 77 pages, Milwaukee, 1905. And remember: you can read the complete memoir at this link, which is a part of the admirably organized and comprehensive online genealogy project The Desmond Archives.

Pioneer Days

Chapter 3 of Desmond’s memoir will be of particular interest to CHH readers. It relates various early Mequon events, some involving the Desmond family’s Catholic faith, their Bonniwell neighbors, and the local school that the Bonniwells helped build in the early 1840s. That first “Bonniwell School,” located less than a mile west of the Jonathan Clark house on what is now the southeast corner of Bonniwell and Wauwatosa roads in Mequon, was sketched in 1864 by Evander Bonniwell. The sketch (above) is reproduced here from page 71 of George B. Bonniwell’s comprehensive family history, The Bonniwells: 1000 Years. (Used by permission.)

[31]        III.   PIONEER DAYS

THE "hazard of new fortunes" undertaken by the Desmond family involved the clearing away of woods with the ax of the pioneer and the building of a commodious log house.
    The pioneers of this neighborhood were the Bonniwell brothers, who had settled there about 1835 [sic, 1839], and it was known as the Bonniwell settlement.
    Indians still roamed the forests of southeastern Wisconsin in 1843. My [32] father, then ten years old, alone in the house one day, was visited by a brave to whom he gave a large loaf of bread. The Indian loosened his belt as he ate the loaf, and when it was all gone departed peaceably on his journey.
    There was a log school house to which my father went. Books were not plentiful in those days. He studied his spelling lesson during the noon hour from the book of a desk mate. He had to start at the foot of the class, but one day he got to the head and kept his place.
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Meet the Neighbors: the Desmond family (part 1)

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

In an earlier post, I mentioned a local history source that was previously unknown to me, the Memoir of Thomas Desmond, written by his son Henry Desmond. It was cited by Walter D. Corrigan in the bibliography of his otherwise error-prone and forgettable History of the town of Mequon, Ozaukee County, Wisconsin, brought down to about 1870.

I was intrigued. I already knew that Thomas Desmond and his brother Dennis were pioneer residents of the Town of Mequon and neighbors of the Jonathan Clark family for several decades. The Thomas and Dennis Desmond farm parcels were located in the NW quarter of Section 3, T9N-R21E, Town of Mequon. The Desmond farms, and the adjacent John Corcoran farm, were situated due north of the Jesse Hubbard, Jr., farm, due west of the Ferdinand and Friedrich Groth properties, and immediately adjacent to the northwest corner of the Jonathan and Mary Clark farm, which occupied all of the southeast quarter of section 3.

You can see the Thomas Desmond and Dennis Desmond parcels in the upper left quadrant of this detail from the Shoolmap of the Town of Mequon / School Map of the Town of Mequon, pre-1872, UW-Milwaukee–AGS Digital Map Collection, showing Sec. 3, T9N-R21E. The southeast quarter section is labeled “Widow Clark,” and suggests that the map was made sometime after Jonathan Clark’s death in 1857, but before Mary Turck Clark and her daughters sold the property in 1872. (For more on this unique, useful map, see our post Monday: Map Day! – “Shoolmap” of Mequon, c. 1872.)

A Memoir

A memoir of any early Mequon settler, especially a Clark family neighbor, is always something I’d like to read. But the Desmond memoir was privately published, in 1905, in an edition of only 50 copies, to be distributed only to the immediate family. I checked Worldcat, and it had a citation for the book, but did not know of any libraries that had a copy. Might someone, somewhere, have this little book? Well…

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“Dashing through the snow…”

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

As I write this, southeastern Wisconsin is in the midst of our first substantial snowfall of Winter, 2025-2026. In Jonathan and Mary Clark’s lifetime, the day after a storm like this meant it was time to hitch up the sleigh and have some fun “dashing through the snow.” Here’s a lightly-revised and expanded repeat of a post that celebrates Clark-era “sleighing time” and “jingle bells.” (And be sure to click the highlighted links for more vintage wintertime images and info.)

Kimmel and Forster, publishers, “Winter Pleasure in the Country,” circa 1865. National Museum of American History, Peters Prints Collection, Smithsonian Institution.1 Note the modest straps of jingle bells on the one-horse sleigh and the much more ostentatious—and louder—straps of bells on the two-horse sleigh.

Last winter, our earlier CHH posts Snow!, Shoveling out -and other winter chores and Stuff Happens – on a sleigh ride, got me wondering again about winter travel in old Washington/Ozaukee county during the Clarks’ era of the mid-1830s through the 1860s or so. Assuming most of the more successful farmers—such as the Clarks, Bonniwells and Turcks—owned a one- or two-horse sleigh, how easy was it to navigate that sleigh on the early county roads? Could you sleigh ride all the way to Milwaukee? And if you could, how long might that take?

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JCH Sources: a look a local histories, part 2

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 3 Comments

This is the second part of a multi-part look at local (Mequon and Washington/Ozaukee County) history sources. If you missed Part 2, I recommend you click this link and read that first.

In today’s post, I’d like to guide you to and through another one of the local histories that I’ve bumped into over the last decade or so. As in Part 1, I’ll include a link to a PDF copy of the source, make comments on the range and quality of the information in the book, and sum it up with an overall grade for accuracy, style, and usefulness.

“All sources lie.” — Lawrence of Arabia (supposedly)

That provocative quote begins the forward of Elizabeth Shown Mills’s monumental Evidence Explained (third edition, revised, 2017), the “Bible” of genealogical research, source evaluation, and modern citation practices. It makes an arresting opening for her almost 900-page book, devoted to historical and genealogical sources and how to cite them.1 But what does the author mean by beginning her book with Lawrence’s (supposed) quote? Here is part of her explanation:

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JCH News & Events – Spring, 2025

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

Howdy! Sorry for the long blog silence. It’s not that I’m lacking for topics or material to share with you all, but I’ve been busy “behind the scenes” at the Clark House for the last month or so.

In particular, I’ve been working on two big projects. JCH executive director Nina Look and I have just published the Spring | May 2025 issue of the JCH Newsletter, and Nina and I have been collaborating with JCH intern Nicole Buerosse on a major, archival-quality upgrade for the preservation and display of the museum’s irreplaceable Bonniwell Family Bible.

Scaffolding at the Clark House? What’s up with that? Read on for more info…

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JCH Sources: a look a local histories, part 1

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 5 Comments

If you are interested in the history of the Jonathan Clark House, there are a number of published local histories that you might consult. Many of them are available online, as free, searchable, PDF downloads from Internet Archive, GoogleBooks, the Library of Congress, and other digital repositories. This is pretty cool but, as you might expect, not all sources are equal. Some are more reliable than others. Some contain detailed information about early settlement, settlers, government and politicians, pioneer businesses and other local affairs, often drawing upon old primary sources, some of which have since disappeared. Other histories are more content to paraphrase (and sometimes mangle) earlier volumes. How do you know which to trust?

A guide for the perplexed

In today’s post, I’d like to guide you to and through several of the published histories that I’ve spent a lot of time with. I’ll provide links to PDF copies where available, make a few comments on the range and quality of the information in each book, and give each book an overall grade for accuracy, style, and usefulness.

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“Dashing through the snow…”

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / Leave a comment

Kimmel and Forster, publishers, “Winter Pleasure in the Country,” circa 1865. National Museum of American History, Peters Prints Collection, Smithsonian Institution.1

Talk of sleighs and sleighing in our recent CHH posts on Snow! and Shoveling out -and other winter chores, plus our January, 2022, essay on Stuff Happens – on a sleigh ride, got me wondering again about winter travel in old Washington/Ozaukee county during the Clarks’ era. Assuming most of the more successful farmers—such as the Clarks, Bonniwells and Turcks—owned a one- or two-horse sleigh, how easy was it to navigate that sleigh on the early county roads? Could you ride all the way to Milwaukee? And if you could, how long might that take?

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JMC: a soldier’s life at Fort Howard, 1834

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / Leave a comment

In the summer of 1834, the U.S. Army’s Brevet Brigadier General Hugh Brady made an inspection tour of many of the posts under his command. One of those posts was Fort Howard, at Green Bay, in the then Michigan Territory. In an earlier post, I briefly mentioned the General’s July 17, 1834, visit to the fort and how “Gen. Brady reviewed all the troops, who made a brilliant display of military evolutions, highly gratifying to those who witnessed them, and evidently meriting the approbation they received from the worthy and excellent commander-in-chief.“

Gen. Hugh Brady, c. 1844-1851. Photo credit: see note 1

I have since located the official report of the inspection that Brady sent to his superiors back in Washington, DC. and I want to share it with you today. I think you’ll find that a close reading of the general’s report will give some insights into the daily lives and routines of soldiers—including our Jonathan M. Clark—as they served their country “on the frontier” in the mid-1830s.

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