In spite of several unusually summer-like days, fall has definitely arrived in our corner of Wisconsin.
I’m working on several Clark House history projects at once and, as the saying goes, “there are a lot of moving parts,” and I need more time to get organized.
So no essay today, but here’s a lovely seasonal photo for your enjoyment:
Continue readingThis is a revised, updated, and expanded version of a post originally published at Clark House Historian on November 11, 2016.
One hundred and two 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 the optimistically named “War to End All Wars.”
In the United States, the commemoration of the war dead and the Allied victory began as Armistice Day in 1919, 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.
Continue readingI’m working with one of our young Clark House Museum volunteers to examine the life of early Mequon settler Peter Turck and his large family. Peter Turck was a man of many talents and trades, which we will look into in more depth in future posts. He was also Mary (Turck) Clark’s father and Jonathan M. Clark’s father-in-law.1
The Turk/Turck family is an old Dutch-American family that first came to the New World in the 1660s, settling on the island of Manhattan, then known as New Amsterdam, part of the Dutch colony of New Netherland. The Turk/Turck family maintained a presence in Manhattan well into the twentieth-century.2 Some Turk/Turck descendants migrated to the Hudson River valley in the 1700s and stayed for many generations.
For our purposes, I thought it would be useful to have a map that gave an overview of the places that Peter Turck and Rachael Gay lived before coming to Wisconsin Territory in 1837:
Continue readingWhat a week…
I’m working on several Clark House research projects, but taking a break from writing today. Meanwhile, here’s another lovely photo of autumn in the Upper Midwest:
Continue readingWhile we’re all waiting for this year’s votes to be counted, here’s a revised and updated repeat of a post that first appeared here on November 8, 2016.
In an earlier post, I outlined some of the key moments in the settlement and changing political boundaries of early Washington/Ozaukee county. Originally attached to Milwaukee County for all civil and judicial matters, old Washington County got its civil independence by act of the Territorial Legislature on February 19, 1840. And on “the second Monday of October next,” i.e., October 12, 1840, the first election to chose county officers was held at the Mequon home of Taylor Heavilon.1, 2
Continue readingor, How to Preserve Our Constitutional Republic
A guide for the perplexed…
Follow these steps and you—yes, you—will help preserve, protect, and defend our constitution and representative government, and also prevent embarrassing and potentially de-stabilizing nonsense like this:
Continue readingFinding our way on Bouchette’s 1815 Topographical Map…
Last Monday—as part of our ongoing search for Jonathan M. Clark’s roots in northern Vermont and Lower Canada—we introduced Joseph Bouchette’s huge and minutely detailed Topographical map of the Province of Lower Canada, published in London in 1815. Today’s post picks up where we left off last week, so if you missed that introduction, I recommend you click here and read it first.
For easy reference, here’s the complete, original map again:
Continue readingOctober is almost over, and in Jonathan M. Clark’s world—the Upper Midwest, New England, and southern Canada—that can mean beautiful blue skies framing the vivid autumn yellows, oranges, and reds of the maples and the varied greens of the firs.
Continue readingWell, the big day is just a week away. Here at Clark House Historian I try and remain officially non-partisan. But as a researcher and writer, and as an American with long, deep, roots in this country, I have a passionate interest in our nation and its history, and a life-long desire to see us live up to our highest ideals and aspirations. (Of course, human nature being what it is, we have not always lived up to those ideals.)
So with the election approaching, today’s post takes a look at the political leanings of early Washington County and—after its establishment in 1853—Ozaukee County, with an emphasis on presidential elections from 1848 to 1880. Our main source today is the invaluable History of Washington and Ozaukee counties, Wisconsin […], published in Chicago in 1881. Let’s begin with some of the earliest results, following statehood in early 1848:
Continue readingI found Bouchette’s 1815 Topographical Map of Lower Canada…
In our previous post, we looked at a verbal description of Stanstead, Lower Canada, excerpted from A Topographical Description of the Province of Lower Canada, with Remarks upon Upper Canada, and on the relative connexion of both provinces with the United States of America, written by Joseph Bouchette, surveyor general of Lower Canada, and published in London in 1815.
To accompany his 1815 book, Bouchette published a map of the province, and it’s an amazing map, with an extravagant title:
To His Royal Highness George Augustus Frederick … This Topographical map of the Province of Lower Canada, shewing its division into Districts, Counties, Seigniories, & Townships … Is … Most gratefully dedicated by… Joseph Bouchette, His Majesty’s Surveyor General of the Province & Lieutt. Colonel C.M. … Published by W. Faden, Charing Cross, Augst. 12th. 1815. Engraved by J. Walker & Sons, 47 Bernard Street, Russell Square, London. J. Walker sculp.
Rumsey Collection
For simplicity’s sake, I’ll refer to it as Bouchette’s Topographical map of the Province of Lower Canada, 1815. The original is held in the vast David Rumsey Map Collection at Stanford University. And in the words of their curators,
[t]he large ten sheet map is extraordinary – it is over ten feet long when joined and almost five feet tall. It has five views and three large inset maps of Montreal, Quebec, and Three Rivers. The detail and graphic elegance of the large map is the equal (or perhaps the superior) of any of the contemporary maps that we have seen (and none of which are on such a large scale – the only potential candidate would be Eddy’s Map of the Country Thirty Miles Round the City of New York). Of course the engraving was done by the Walker firm in London, whose resources were up to the New York and Philadelphia engravers, or better, so a comparison with American produced maps is not entirely fair. Bouchette’s work as Surveyor General must have instilled in him an obsession with the accuracy and fineness of detail that one sees in these maps.
Rumsey Collection
So enough fanfare. Let’s look at the map:
Continue reading
Clark House Historian 