Washington County

Alfred Bonniwell documents – part 5: Wisconsin, 1846-1847

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 3 Comments

Continuing our look at the life of Alfred Bonniwell, today’s post focuses on two documents, the Wisconsin territorial censuses of 1846 and 1847. We’ll take a close look at the Bonniwell families as enumerated on the Wisconsin territorial census of 1846, and discuss briefly the status of the 1847 census schedules for old Washington/Ozaukee county.1

The Wisconsin Territorial census of 1846:

The next Wisconsin territorial census after 1842 was officially enumerated on June 1, 1846. The record of Mequon’s various Bonniwell families begins on the third line of page 43 of the Washington county schedules:

For full citation, see note 2, below; image lightly tinted. Click to open larger image in new window.

For our purposes today, the key “heads of families” and their households begin on line 3. They are the households of:

• W. T. Bonniwell . . . . .  2 males, 4 females
• Eleanor Hyde. . . . . . . .3 males, 2 females
• C Bonniwell. . . . . . . . . 3 males, 5 females
• P. Moss. . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 male, 1 female
• J. Bonniwell. . . . . . . . . 5 males, 4 females
• G. Bonniwell. . . . . . . . 2 males, 3 females
• H. Bonniwell. . . . . . . . 1 male, 3 females

We see that by mid-1846 there were seven Bonniwell family households in Mequon’s “Bonniwell Settlement.” Five were headed by Bonniwell sons: William T., Charles, James, George and Henry, and another by Bonniwell brother-in-law Philip Moss. And Matriarch Eleanor (Hills Bonniwell) Hyde still led her own substantial household.

Who’s who in 1846?

As we noted in our discussion of the 1842 territorial census, identifying “who’s who?” in each family takes some guesswork, and the identifications are never 100% certain. But let’s try and make some educated guesses about who is living with whom in each of the 1846 Bonniwell family households. Let’s start with the families of the Bonniwell sons:

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Alfred Bonniwell documents – part 4: Wisconsin territorial census, 1842

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

Continuing on with our series of Alfred Bonniwell documents, today’s post looks at one of two censuses that (probably) record Alfred Bonniwell in Wisconsin Territory between the federal decennial censuses of 1840 and 1850. If you need to catch up, our previous installments are here, here, here, here and here.
UPDATED May 22, 2022, to correct Charles Bonniwell, Sr.’s birth year to 1806

The Wisconsin territorial census of 1842

For background on the 1842 Wisconsin territorial census, its enumeration in old Washington/Ozaukee county, and its relation to the Clark, Turck and Bonniwell families and their neighbors, you’ll want to read Census Records for the In-Between Years: 1842.1

The official enumeration date for this census was June 1, 1842; the enumeration of old Washington county—still attached to Milwaukee County for legal purposes—was done by Levi Ostrander and officially completed on July 1, 1842. Here’s page 65 of that census. The extended Bonniwell family—and some of their notable neighbors—are circled in red.2

Full source details in note 2, below. Click to open larger image in new window.

Let’s take a closer look at each of these families and try and understand which Bonniwells were living where, in Mequon, in mid-summer, 1842…

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Alfred Bonniwell documents – part 3: Wisconsin, 1840

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 5 Comments

Today’s post continues our series about the life of Alfred Bonniwell, youngest son of Mequon’s Bonniwell family, and brother-in-law of Jonathan and Mary (Turck) Clark. If you missed them, our first installments are here, here, here and here. And for more on how the Bonniwells got from New York to Wisconsin in 1839, see Erie Canal – the Bonniwell Family 1832-39 , complete with a handsome, annotated map.

Alfred enters the public record

In our previous posts, we have discussed the lack of specific records documenting Alfred Bonniwell’s life after his baptism in Chatham, Kent, England in 1826, through his migration to Canada and his years in New York.1 That began to change once the family arrived in Wisconsin. Today I’d like to add to our knowledge of Alfred and his family by investigating an essential census schedule that provides important information about their first year in Wisconsin.

1836 & 1838 – Wisconsin’s first territorial censuses

The Bonniwells were still in New York at the time of Wisconsin’s first two territorial censuses in 1836 and 1838, but other notable Mequon pioneers were enumerated as they claimed and cleared land for new farms. If you missed our discussions of these early censuses, you can catch up by reading:
• Census Records for the In-Between Years: 1836, locating Jonathan Clark’s unit as they cut the Military Road along the Fox River, and
• Census Records for the In-Between Years: 1838, the first census for the original Washington county.

1840 – Federal decennial census

The 1840 federal decennial census2 is the first census that records members of the Bonniwell family in Wisconsin. It was enumerated in “Wiskansin Territory, Washington County, June 1, 1840.”

Ancestry.com. 1840 United States Federal Census [database on-line], Washington, Wisconsin Territory; Roll: 580; Page: 123; Hyde and Bonniwell households; Family History Library Film: 0034498. Image annotated, lightly tinted, and cropped. Click to open larger image in new window.

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Alfred Bonniwell documents – part 2: New York

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 5 Comments

Today’s post continues our series about the life of Alfred Bonniwell, youngest son of Mequon’s Bonniwell family, and brother-in-law of Jonathan and Mary (Turck) Clark. If you missed them, our first installments are here, here and here.
UPDATED, February 2, 2022, to include additional information and a link to an earlier post about Bonniwell brother-in-law Philip Moss.
UPDATED, May 22, 2022, to correct Charles Bonniwell’s birth year (should be 1806)

Following their father’s death and burial in Montréal, Lower Canada, on October 18, 1832, the Bonniwell family was at a crossroads. Their original plan to patent land in Lower Canada had to be abandoned. As eldest son Charles Bonniwell recalled;

[…] the family received letters from the brothers who had located in New York [George and William] to come there without delay, and so [we] lost no time in taking the trip by way of Lake Champlain and Whitehall. I went to work in New York [City] where my brothers had employment at the navy yard.1

Whitehall, New York state’s port of entry at the south end of Lake Champlain, was an important waypoint for the Bonniwells, as it would also be for Jonathan M. Clark and other future Mequon neighbors. For more on that, including a handsome lithograph of Whitehall as it appeared c. 1828-1829, see How’d they get here? – JMC, the Bonniwells, and Whitehall, NY

As it turns out, Charles Bonniwell’s statement, “[we] lost no time in taking the trip by way of Lake Champlain and Whitehall,” may be a bit of a generalization. While I have not had a chance to collect or examine copies of the actual naturalization documents for all the Bonniwell boys, the modern index cards for those papers indicate that at the time of father William T. B. Bonniwell’s death the family was already dispersed at several locations. They would eventually reunite and migrate to Wisconsin Territory in 1839.

Where’s Alfred?

Many aspects of the lives of the Bonniwell family in New York are not well documented, including the activities of young Alfred T. Bonniwell. Alfred was only six and a half years old when his father died in Montréal in October, 1832. According to his naturalization papers (filed in Milwaukee on April 6, 1849, and summarized on this modern index card), we know Alfred entered the United States at Whitehall, New York, sometime in November, 1832.

This index card—and Alfred’s 1849 final citizenship document that it summarizes—are the only two official records that I have located that document Alfred’s years in New York state. Without some of the Bonniwell family papers cited in The Bonniwells, and the newspaper articles featuring Charles’s recollections, much of Alfred’s—and his family’s—life from 1832 to 1839 would be a complete mystery.

Based on brother Charles’s recollections, and other documents we have, we can assume that when Alfred came to the U.S. he was accompanied by his mother and several of his siblings, including brothers Charles (27), James (21), and Walter (age 8), and sister Eleanor (18). But not brother Henry (age about 14); more on Henry’s wanderings, below. But my understanding of which Bonniwell migrated via which port, to which destination, and what they did after arrival, is not completely clear. In fact, the family did not all travel together from Montréal to New York, via Whitehall, in November, 1832. Let’s look at the documents for more information…

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Alfred Bonniwell project

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 9 Comments

UPDATED 16 July 2022, to correct typo in Alfred’s death year. Correct year is 1895.

At last month’s annual meeting of the Friends of the Jonathan Clark House, assistant director Nina Look mentioned that she had some sort of research project coming later this year, involving the youngest Bonniwell brother, Alfred T. Bonniwell (1826-1895). I’m not quite sure what Nina’s project will focus on, but Alfred is, perhaps, the least-known Bonniwell, and deserves further study.

As a Bonniwell brother, Alfred plays his part in the establishment of one of Mequon’s first cleared and populated areas, the Bonniwell Settlement. The Clark house—and Clark family—played an important role in the early decades of this settlement, and the history of the Clark family is intimately tied up with their neighbors, the Bonniwells. How intimately?

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What did you do on Sunday?

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

Updated Feb. 14, 2022 to add the qualifier “English-speaking” to the second paragraph.

Did you watch the Big Game? Go out to eat? Maybe you had to put in a shift at work? Or did you just take a break and relax at home, gearing up for another week on the job? Perhaps you went to church on Sunday.

In Jonathan and Mary Clark’s era, many of their Mequon neighbors would honor the Sabbath by refraining from all work and worshiping privately at home with their families, or gathering with small groups of neighbors to pray and hear the Word. Beginning in the early-1840s, the English-speaking Protestant Christians living near the Clark House—including many members of the Clark, Bonniwell and Turck families—gathered at the new, one-room, Bonniwell School to worship together at Sunday services; these were often led by their neighbor, the farmer and evangelical Methodist preacher Rev. James W. Woodworth.

Rev. Woodworth has concerns…

We have talked about Rev. Woodworth previously and, as we have seen before, he was constantly concerned about the state of his neighbors’ souls. It seems that even though the nation was still riding the wave of several decades of the religious revival now known as the Second Great Awakening, the settlers of the young Wisconsin territory and state were not always very good at “keeping the Sabbath holy.” In his diary entry for August 10, 1855, the reverend lamented:

Aug. 10. The holy Sabbath in this place is most shamefully dese­crated. Hunting, fishing, playing at nine-pins, gambling and other guilty pleasures on this holy day of the Lord. I hope in God that­ he will overturn the kingdom of darkness, and leave them so comfort­less that they may gnaw their tongues for pain, till they return from- their evil ways to God, and do works meet for repentance.

Woodworth, James W., My path and the way the Lord led me, Milwaukee, 1878, p. 79.

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Santa Claus visits Milwaukee, 1867

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins.

Tonight is Christmas Eve, and I thought you might enjoy an expanded reprise of our 1867 Santa Claus story, originally posted December 25 and 30, 2017. This year I have combined the two original posts and incorporated some new illustrations and a few revisions of the text. Here it is again, for your holiday enjoyment. Ho! Ho! Ho!

Christmas in early America

For many years now, Christmas has been celebrated by Americans as an important religious and (increasingly secular) community holiday. Christians gather to worship and commemorate the birth of Jesus, and they and other Americans enjoy a break from work to gather with family and friends to feast and exchange gifts. But it was not always this way.

In many of the American colonies, Christmas was not observed as a religious or secular holiday. The seventeenth-century Puritan leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony considered Christmas to be non-biblical and pagan influenced. In Boston and other parts of New England any observance of Christmas was prohibited and, for a few years, actually illegal:

Penalty for Keeping Christmas, 1659

Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England. Printed by order of the Legislature, edited by Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, M.D., Vol. IV, Part I, 1650-1660, online at mass.gov (accessed 21 Dec. 2021). Click to open larger image in new window.

Transcription:
For preventing disorders arising in several places within this jurisdiction, by reason of some still observing such festivals as were superstitiously kept in other countries, to the great dishonor of God and offence of others, it is therefore ordered by this Court and the authority thereof, that whosoever shall be found observing any such day as Christmas or the like, either by forbearing of labor, feasting, or any other way, upon such accounts as aforesaid, every such person so offending shall pay for every such offence five shillings, as a fine to the country.

Christmas was not generally accepted as a holiday in many parts of the United States until after the federal government made December 25 a national holiday in 1870.

On the other hand…

The Massachusetts Puritans may not have approved of “observing any such day as Christmas or the like, either by forbearing of labor, feasting, or any other way,” but Christmas was “kept in other countries” and increasing numbers of immigrants from those countries to the United States—particularly from Victorian England, Catholic Europe, and the German Lands—celebrated the day in their new American homes with many of their accustomed religious observances and national traditions.

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Veterans Day, 2021

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins.

Veterans Day is today. I’m preparing a new post on one of our Clark House veterans, Mary (Turck) Clark’s youngest sibling, Benjamin Turck (1839-1926), but it’s not quite ready yet. For a wider perspective on the day—and our early Mequon veterans—here’s a post originally published at Clark House Historian on November 11, 2016, and revised, expanded and republished on November 11, 2020. I’ve also incorporated a list of Mequon’s Civil War soldiers, originally published here on May 24, 2020.

Armistice Day

One hundred and three years ago, on the eleventh day, of the eleventh month, at the eleventh hour—Paris time—the Armistice of Compiègne took effect, officially ending the fighting on the Western Front and marking the end of World War I, the optimistically named “War to End All Wars.”

In the United States, the commemoration of the war dead and the Allied victory began in 1919 as Armistice Day, by proclamation of President Woodrow Wilson. Congress created Armistice Day as a legal holiday in 1938. Starting in 1945, a World War II veteran named Raymond Weeks proposed that the commemorations of November 11 be expanded to celebrate all veterans, living and dead. In 1954 Congress and President Eisenhower made that idea official, and this is what we commemorate today. There are many veterans with a connection to the Jonathan Clark house. We honor a few of them in this post.

Jonathan Clark, Henry Clark, and the U.S. Army

Jonathan M. Clark (1812-1857) enlisted as a Private in Company K, Fifth Regiment of the U. S. Army, and served at Ft. Howard, Michigan (later Wisconsin) Territory, from 1833 until mustering out, as Sargent Jonathan M. Clark, in 1836. In the 1830s, Fort Howard was on the nation’s northwestern frontier. JMC’s Co. K spent much of the summers of 1835 and 1836 cutting the military road across Wisconsin, from Ft. Howard toward Ft. Winnebago, near modern Portage, Wisconsin.

Fort Howard, Wisconsin Territory, circa 1855, from Marryat, Frederick, and State Historical Society Of Wisconsin. “An English officer’s description of Wisconsin in 1837.” Madison: Democrat Printing Company, State Printers, 1898. Library of Congress. Click to open larger image in new window.

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Caroline gets married – but where?

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

May, 1861

In a recent post, Caroline Clark – public school teacher, we examined Caroline Clark’s brief tenure as a teacher in the grammar department of Milwaukee’s Ninth Ward School, and concluded:

Caroline Clark’s employment as a Grammar Department teacher began on September 1, 1860. According to the 1861 Report, she taught for eight months. That would mean she left her teaching position around the beginning of May, 1861. Why? One factor might have been her salary […] But the more likely reason for her departure from the Ninth Ward School was that on May 15, 1861, she married Milwaukee county farmer William Wallace Woodward. For much (all?) of the nineteenth century, it was customary for female school teachers to be single; once they married, they were expected to leave the profession and set up housekeeping with their new husband and, eventually, start a family of their own. I think it’s safe to assume that this is what happened to “Miss Caroline M. Clark” in May, 1861.

Finding Caroline’s marriage record

Long before I found Caroline’s 1893 biographical sketch, or her profile and interview in the Omaha Daily Bee (March 30, 1916, page 11), or read her several long obituaries, I was able to determine when—and whom—she married. How? By using the Wisconsin Historical Society’s invaluable—but not infallible—Pre-1907 Vital Records Database (Birth, Marriage, Death). Yes, the interface is a bit clunky, but if you search for “Clark, Caroline,” one of the results you’ll find is:

Seems plausible, right? But how do we know it’s “our” Caroline? And how do we match her with a spouse?

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Caroline Clark – from student to teacher

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

We’re looking into the life of Jonathan M. and Mary (Turck) Clark’s first child, Caroline Clark. If you need to catch up, you might start with some pivotal dates and events in the lives of Caroline and her Clark family in:

Then check out these previous posts in our current Caroline (Clark) Woodward series:

The biographical materials we looked at in those posts were a good introduction to Caroline’s life (through 1893), but lacked some key information about her youth, and especially her transition from a scholastic “prodigy” in rural Mequon to—supposedly—a teacher in Milwaukee’s public schools. And in order to examine her time as a Milwaukee public school student and teacher, we had to take a deep dive into the life and work of her esteemed high school principal, Caroline Clark’s mentor, John G. McKindley.

Walling, Henry Francis. Map of the county of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. New York: M.H. Tyler, 1858, Library of Congress, (inset showing Cross’ Block).

View of Cross’ Block circa 1858, home of the Milwaukee School Board until destroyed by fire on December 30, 1860.1, 2

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