Washington County

JMC, Barney Clow and Milwaukee’s American House hotel

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

Updated, August 4, 2024, to add a few explanatory links, to clarify the years of arrival of B. Clow and D. Maxon, and to clarify which families stayed in Washington/Ozaukee county, and which sold out and moved on.

Home away from home

Until the late-1850s, there were no railroads connecting Mequon to Milwaukee. If you needed to go to the city—for shopping, shipping, social calls or legal business—you either had to ride a horse, a wagon, a carriage (a sleigh in the winter), or simply walk there and back. It was about a 19 mile journey, over roads of dubious quality and variable states of repair. Even in fine weather, a one way trip might take the better part of the day.

So it was not unusual for Mequon farmers, such as the Clarks and their neighbors, to need a place to stay overnight when they ventured to the city. And from early days, one of the top destinations for Milwaukee travelers was the American House hotel. In 1844, the American House looked like this…

Advertisement, “American House,” [Prairieville (later Waukesha), Wisconsin] American Freeman, 28 Sept 1844 p 4

Take a moment to click the image and open a larger version in a new window. Zoom in and admire the couples strolling on the balconies and the arriving, or departing, stagecoach at the front door. All in all this looks pretty deluxe, by 1840s’ standards. But the hotel business, then as now, was always changing. Less than six years later the American House would be expanded, refurnished, and under new management…

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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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The Green Bay-to-Chicago and other federal roads, c. 1840

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 3 Comments

Time for one more follow-up to our recent posts Monday: Map Day! – Wisconsin’s Federal Roads in 1840 and JMC, the Army, and the Military Road, 1835-1840. As I mentioned in that “Monday: Map Day!” post, I recently found some unique maps and related documents in the digitized collections of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), in particular a group of maps and drawings created in 1840 by members of the army’s Corps of Topographical Engineers under the supervision of Capt. T. J. Cram.

Before they get lost in my files, I thought I’d share the other documents from Capt. Cram’s 1840 survey that have survived and been digitized by NARA. I’ve already said quite a bit about these 1840 maps and drawings; now I’m most interested in gathering the remaining 1840 documents and their bibliographic citations here for reference. So not much commentary today, but lots of images. And—as always—I recommend clicking on each item to open a larger, higher-resolution image in a new window.

Bridges on the Green Bay Road

The first item is of particular interest for Clark House history fans, as it provides additional details about old Washington/Ozaukee county’s first federal road, the north-south route connecting Fort Dearborn, Chicago, to Fort Howard at Green Bay. The drawing is part of a larger document; this portion is titled “Road from Ft. Howard, by Milwaukee & Racine, to the Northern boundary of Illinois.”

NARA, full citation, below.

The drawing illustrates construction details of the simple wooden bridges that were part of the Green Bay Road, circa 1840. This road, and these bridges, comprised the main north-south transportation route for the U.S. Mail and for immigrants and settlers of the new counties of southeast Wisconsin Territory. The Clarks, Turcks, Bonniwells and other early Mequon pioneers would have crossed bridges like these on their trips to and from Milwaukee, Grafton, Port Washington and beyond on the Green Bay Road.

And that’s not all…

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Monday: Map Day! – Wisconsin’s Federal Roads in 1840

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 5 Comments

I spent much of January and February preparing my March 9th, 2024, Civil War presentation at the Cedarburg History Museum. In that talk I tried to take a more personal and local look at the war by examining the military service of few of the Cedarburg relatives and future in-laws of 1868-1873 Clark House resident Fred Beckmann. In my research, I found some unique stories of their years of Union service in the 9th and 26th Wisconsin Infantry Regiments, as well as the impact of the war on families and friends back home in Wisconsin.

I also found several new online collections of unique maps and historical documents. Today’s map is from one of those online sources, the digitized map collection of the National Archives and Records Administration (more on NARA and its holdings, below). This map was made 20 years before the Civil War, in September, 1840, and is one of the earliest—if not the earliest—maps of the federal roads in Wisconsin Territory.1

U.S. Roads in Wisconsin Territory, 1840

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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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Meet the neighbors: the Loomis family

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 3 Comments

I’m in the middle of several larger CHH research projects and I find myself swamped with information on early Mequon area pioneers. So rather than wait until I’ve got it all sorted out and then organize it into a big essay or two (or more!), I’ll be putting up some of these new bits and pieces on the blog as I find them.

Today’s subjects are the families of Jonathan Loomis (1776-1849) and his eldest child, Issac Chester Loomis (1802-1882), two of old Washington/Ozaukee county’s first white settler families. I’ve mentioned some of these folks in previous CHH posts. And while the Loomis name does appear in some of the early county histories and land records, so far I’d not been able to learn much about the family or how they came to the Wisconsin Territory in the 1830s. In fact, given that the mid-1800s penmanship on some of the source documents was often florid to the point of being unreadable, I was sometimes unsure whether documents discussing or signed by “J. Loomis” versus “I. Loomis” represented the same man, or two individuals. Today’s source goes a long way toward solving these questions.1

Descendants of Joseph Loomis in America

Loomis, Elias, and Charles Arthur Hoppin. Descendants of Joseph Loomis in America, and his antecedents in the old world. edited by Loomis, Elisha S [Berea? O, 1909], Library of Congress.

As luck would have it, I just ran across a useful digitized book in the collection of the Library of Congress, titled Descendants of Joseph Loomis in America, and his antecedents in the old world. I’m not an expert in Loomis genealogy, and thus not entirely sure how accurate this book is, but what I have read here mostly checks out when compared to what I have found elsewhere. With that said, below are the key bits of the book that are related to very early Washington/Ozaukee county history and, in particular, Isaac Chester Loomis and his family. What follows is taken verbatim from pages 193 and 390-391, though I’ve taken the liberty of expanding many of the abbreviations and adding a few paragraph breaks for ease of reading. I’ve also added a few footnotes to explain some possibly obscure references.

Let’s begin with the patriarch of the family, Jonathan Loomis…

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