Belated Happy Birthday wishes and congratulations to Clark House 2020 Staff Member of the Year, and volunteer of many talents, Shaw Bridges!
Click the photo below for an illustrated sample of Shaw’s multi-faceted contributions to Jonathan Clark House museum activities, both in public and behind the scenes.
Due to the current Covid-19 situation, Jonathan Clark House museum activities are currently suspended. We hope they will resume soon. Meanwhile, JCH director Nina Look is sending regular updates and announcements, and I’d like to pass them along to you, here.
As you’ll see from the flyer (below), we’re sorry to announce that the annual Pie on the Patio fundraiser auction has been cancelled.
I know I’ll miss seeing my Clark House friends, enjoying tasty local pie, and supporting the Clark House. But all is not lost…
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In spite of the worst pandemic in a century, a quick glance at the news will show that many Americans are celebrating this Memorial Day in our now usual way, as “the first day of summer.” Beaches and parks are open, stores entice customers with deals and sales, and people are crowding shoulder to shoulder in swimming pools and along ocean boardwalks.
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.”
This Memorial Day, let’s remember those Clark House family, friends and Mequon neighbors who served in the Civil War, and what they fought—and died—for. The History of Washington and Ozaukee Counties of 1881 lists these 65 volunteers from Mequon:
Continue reading“Constant vigilance!” — J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Mad Eye Moody’s advice to the Hogwarts students was essential for them and remains apt for anyone doing historical research. Whether working on a large history project or a modest family tree, constant vigilance is needed to avoid bad information. Fortunately, the historian or genealogist’s dementors are not deadly wraiths ready to suck the life force from us, but more mundane creatures such as typos, inaccessible or hard-to-read documents, and—most vexingly—mystery data.
For some reason, in my database I had recorded that Jonathan and Mary Clark’s sixth child, daughter Laura, had a middle name of “Mandlena.” This—unless I’ve overlooked some important but now lost evidence—was nonsense. It’s the sort of mistake that creeps into historical writing via random error; I don’t know how I managed to make this particular honker. So for the record, the Clark’s sixth child was Laura Marcelleau Clark.
Continue readingTo all my blog readers, I hope this finds you well and staying safe at home.
I just received a message from Jonathan Clark House director Nina Look and I thought I’d share it with you:
Dear Friends-
As you might imagine, the Clark House is closed at this time, but we continue to think about the history of our early settlers and how important it is to share that history with our children. I prepared the attached guide with the help of JCH Education Coordinator Margaret Bussone and JCH Curator Fred Derr.
Feel free to pass it on to a young person who may want to “Think like a historian.”
Nina Look, Director
It’s almost March and that means Spring is coming, and so is America’s classic game—baseball. So leave winter behind and join the Friends of the Jonathan Clark House on Wednesday, March 4, from 6:30-8:00 p.m. at the Concordia University Wisconsin Pharmacy Building, room 008, for a lively talk by Dr. Patrick W. Steele on the “History of Baseball in Wisconsin.”
Refreshments will be served and door prizes given. The event is free and open to the public, with a suggested $10 donation to the Friends of the Jonathan Clark House. An RSVP to jchmuseum@gmail.com will help us plan the event. Need more information? Contact Clark House director Nina Look at jchmuseum@gmail.com
Jonathan Clark House sign, Mequon. Photo by Reed Perkins.
Even if the New Year is already 1/12th done – and we’re still two months away from the blog’s fourth (!) anniversary – Greetings and Best Wishes for a fine 2020 to all of you.
As always, I continue to be busy researching a large number of Clark House related subjects, and I look forward to sharing my findings with you in the coming year and beyond.
The new year is also a fine time for making changes, and I decided it was time to make a big one here at the Clark House Historian blog — no more ads! I don’t know about you, but I was getting pretty tired of reading posts and looking at historic documents while surrounded by images of nasty foot conditions and ambulance-chasing lawyers. So I finally took the plunge and shifted from a free but ad-filled blog to a paid plan with, finally, no ads! I hope you enjoy the more reader-friendly experience.
While the blog has been quiet for a while, behind the scenes I’ve been pursuing some hot leads as we try and solve the mysteries of Jonathan M. Clark’s parents, siblings and birthplace. More on that in the near future. Meanwhile, here are a few upcoming events that may be of interest:
On Saturday, February 1, 2020, from 10:00-4:00, Jonathan Clark House museum volunteers will have an indoor exhibit with family-friendly activities at the Mequon Nature Reserve Winter Frolic. For more information and parking directions, see their Facebook page.
Perhaps this should really be the Number One Clark House History Mystery! — was Jonathan M. Clark born in the United States or not? All of our previous evidence indicates that Jonathan M. Clark was born in Vermont in 1811 or 1812, namely:
• Jonathan’s army enlistment papers from September 19, 1833, state that he was “…born in Derby, in the State of Vermont.”
• His 1850 Federal Census population schedule declares he was born in “Vir,” which we are quite certain indicates the State of Vermont.
• In later years, JMC’s children would almost always declare on subsequent Federal Censuses that their father was born in Vermont. (There were a few exceptions; “Ohio” was given by one daughter almost a half-century after her father’s death. We’ll have more on those census responses in later posts.) For example, the second sentence of daughter Caroline Clark Woodward’s biography in American Women: Fifteen Hundred Biographies With Over 1,400 Portraits… (New York: Mast, Crowell & Kirkpatrick, 1897, page 799) reads: Her father, Jonathan M. Clark, was a Vermonter of English descent, who, born in 1812 , of Revolutionary parentage, inherited an intense American patriotism.
So it seems clear that Jonathan M. Clark was born in Vermont. If that’s the case why, on March 19, 1848, did JMC travel to the District Court of the United States in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin Territory and file this document?:
If you missed them, you might want to begin with Part 1 and Part 2 of our look at Jonathan and Mary Clark and their growing family on the 1850 federal decennial census. Those earlier posts focused in some detail on the names and ages of the various family members and how that information correlates with the manuscript Clark Family Record. In this post we’ll try and answer the question of where Jonathan, Mary, and the children were born, a simple question, right? Let’s start by taking another look at the census page: Continue reading
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