Erie Canal – the Woodworth family, 1835 (part 1)

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 3 Comments

We’ve been looking at the influence of the Erie Canal on the early lives of both Jonathan M. Clark and the Peter and Rachael (Gay) Turck family (here and here), and the Bonniwell family (here), I thought I’d share more stories of Mequon settlers that used the canal to make their way westward to the wilds of the Wisconsin Territory in the 1830s and ’40s. Today’s focus is on immigrants from Nova Scotia, particularly the Woodworth brothers, Ephraim and James.

We’re going to need a bigger map!

We’ve had numerous occasions to quote from the memoirs of early Mequon pioneer—and Turck and Clark family friend—James W. Woodworth. Unlike many pioneers who came west, bought land, and never returned home, James W. Woodworth and various members of his family made the round-trip journey between Nova Scotia to the newly opened lands of the midwestern U.S. several times in the 1830s and ’40s. Descriptions of three separate trips can be found in Rev. Woodworth’s book, and they give additional color and detail to our understanding of what immigration to “the West” was like in that era. But to give you a proper feel for the hardiness of these 19th-century migrants, we’re going to need a bigger map!

Eastern Canada and the Northeast United States, c. 1835

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Erie Canal – the Bonniwell Family 1832-39

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 7 Comments

Inspired by our earlier looks at the influence of the Erie Canal on the early lives of both Jonathan M. Clark and the Peter and Rachael (Gay) Turck family (here and here), I thought I’d share more stories of Mequon settlers that used the canal to make their way westward to the wilds of the Wisconsin Territory in the 1830s and ’40s. Today’s focus is on the Bonniwell family.

England to Montréal to New York

Originally from Chatham, Kent Co., England, the William T. B. and Eleanor (Hills) Bonniwell family came to Lower Canada by ship, sailing across the Atlantic Ocean and up the St. Lawrence River to Montréal. Shortly after arrival in 1832, family patriarch William T. B Bonniwell died there of cholera.

Following her husband’s untimely death, Eleanor (Hills) Bonniwell, decided to leave Montréal and take her children south to New York City, via the Richelieu River, Lake Champlain and the new Champlain Canal connecting Whitehall, New York, to the Hudson River. Two of her sons, George and William Bonniwell, had already located and found work in New York City.

After living for a bit in New York City, Eleanor moved upriver to the town of Esopus, Ulster County, on the west bank of the Hudson River. Sometime around 1835 Eleanor Bonniwell married a second time. Her new husband was a widower, Captain Christopher Hyde, of the town of Hyde Park, just across the river in Dutchess County.

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Erie Canal – Macedon, New York

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 5 Comments

As a follow up to our look at the Erie Canal and our Turck and Clark families, I’ve been researching and writing about some other early Mequon settlers and their migrations to Mequon from Lower Canada, Nova Scotia, New England and New York. It’s taking longer than I expected.

Until those posts are ready, here’s a photo of one of the historic Erie Canal locks, near Macedon, Wayne County, New York. Peter and Rachael (Gay) Turck lived nearby from sometime around 1828 until they went west to Buffalo, New York to begin their steamship journey to Milwaukee in July or August, 1837. A large number of other early Mequon immigrants, including the Bonniwell and Woodworth families, also would have passed through this lock (or its predecessor) on their way their new homes in Wisconsin.

Historic Erie Canal Lock No. 60, near Macedon, Wayne Co., New York, looking to the west. Photo by Reed Perkins, 2011. Click to open larger image in new window.

This is the expanded, second version of this lock. When it was built in 1821, as part of the original canal, it was Lock 71. As a nearby marker explains:

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Monday: Map Day! – The Erie Canal

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 14 Comments

Turck, Gay & Clark in the early years of the Erie Canal

New York state’s Erie Canal was one of the wonders of the modern world when it first opened to the public in 1825. The original 362 miles of canals and locks connected the Hudson River at Albany, in the east, with Lake Erie at Buffalo, in the west. This made a faster, more economical connection between the goods and markets of the eastern states and Atlantic seaboard and the newly opened lands, crops, and timber products of the nation’s newest states and territories.

Another important part of the New York state canal system was the Champlain Canal. It was built at the same time as the Erie Canal and connected Canada and western New England—via Lake Champlain—to New York and the world. Today’s map shows the course of both the Erie Canal and the Champlain Canal, and their rise and fall, as they existed in in the early 1830s. In the 1820s and ’30s, these two canals made possible the westward migration of many of Mequon’s early settlers, including—among others—the Turck, Bonniwell, Woodworth, Strickland, and Loomer families, and the young Jonathan M. Clark. Let’s begin by looking at the whole map, and then zoom in on some particular Clark, Turck and Gay family details:

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Turck, Turk…Durk?

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 5 Comments

Spelling variations in old records

Durk, Peter [Turck], baptismal record, 1798, detail. “Peter” starts the left column, father “Jacob A. Durk” is at the top of the center column (source). Click to open larger image in new window.

In a previous post, reader Laura Rexroth asked: Why did they spell Peter Turck’s name incorrectly [i.e., Durk] when he was baptized? That’s a great question, and super relevant to successful historical and genealogical research. So let’s talk about the Turck family surname and, by extension, the whole issue of spelling in earlier times and documents.

There are two main issues to keep in mind:
• variations in spelling that existed at the time the source material was created, and
• subsequent misreadings, including incorrect transcription or indexing of sources

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Clark House News

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

The Friends of the Jonathan Clark House February newsletter is here! Many thanks to all the volunteers, donors, and Clark House board members for their continuing work “to collect, preserve and share the history of the Jonathan Clark House and the early settlers of Mequon Thiensville.”

Once again, Clark House executive director Nina Look has done a wonderful job leading the work of the museum, coordinating the volunteers, and putting together an informative and generously-illustrated newsletter. Just click on this image of the first page to open your own downloadable pdf in a new window:

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CHH Reader Challenge – results!

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 3 Comments

At the end of last month, while working on some longer posts about the Turcks and Clarks, I had some fun creating the first Clark House Historian Reader Challenge: where you get to be the historian!, and today we have the results. The original challenge went something like this:

Here’s an excerpt of a document that will be part of an upcoming post. Can you read and transcribe it? (Ignore the squiggles in the top right corner, they belong to another record on the same page.)

The original CHH Reader Challenge #1. Click to open larger image in new window.

And I gave y’all a hint, the full page from which this record was excerpted. And as a second hint, I suggested that a look at my discussion of Kurrent handwriting might be helpful.

So what is this a record of, and what does it say?

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Wintertime

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

…and I’m still “snowed under” with research and writing.

So here’s another seasonal image from 19th-century America’s favorite printmakers, Currier and Ives:

Currier & Ives. Snowed Up: Ruffed Grouse in Winter. , ca. 1867. New York: Published by Currier & Ives. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2001706217/ (cropped and edited for better color). Click to open larger image in a new window.

It’s a covey of ruffed grouse, sheltering under snow-covered firs. A scene like this would have been familiar to Peter Turck and his growing family in New York’s Hudson River valley, young Jonathan M. Clark in Vermont or Lower Canada, and the settlers in Mequon and points farther north and west.

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Snow!

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

We got some snow in southeast Wisconsin over the weekend, and I’ve spent good parts of the past two days shoveling the driveway and sidewalk. (And then—of course—shoveling the driveway a second time after the city plow finally came through.) Of course, snow was a feature of Jonathan and Mary Clark’s time, too:

Currier & Ives. (1853) The road, winter / O. Knirsch, lith. United States, 1853. New York: Published by Currier & Ives. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/93511164/ (lightly retouched for color balance). Click to open larger image in new window.

We don’t know if the Clarks owned a sleigh while they lived in Mequon. I suspect they probably did, though their sleigh—and their clothing—may not have been quite as posh as those in this Currier & Ives lithograph from 1853.

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Mary Turck Clark—updated

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 10 Comments

The original version of this post was the second-ever post on Clark House Historian. It represented what we knew at the time about Mary Turck, the daughter of Peter Turck and Rachael Gay, wife of Jonathan M. Clark, and mother of the eight Clark family children. The original April, 2016, post was pretty accurate, but we have learned a lot more about Mary and her Turck and Clark families in the meantime. So here is a revised version of that post with errors corrected and ambiguities clarified—where possible.

Please note that there are many more facts about Mary and her Clark and Turck families that I’ve written about in the past almost-5 years that are not linked to in this post. If you are looking for more information about Mary, I highly recommend using the blog’s SEARCH function and our new INDEX. And if you still can’t find the info you want, please ask me! Just use the Leave a Reply box, below, or the CONTACT link, above.

Mary Turck Clark: Mequon Pioneer

CLARK, Mary TURCK portrait

Mary Turck Clark. Photograph courtesy Liz Hickman. Click to open larger image in new window.

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