1800s

first decade of the 1800s

Lesen Sie Kurrent?

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 11 Comments
“Lesen Sie Kurrent?” —Do you read Kurrent?—generated at
http://www.deutsche-handschrift.de/adsschreiben.php#schrifftfeld

Do you have ancestors from the German-speaking world? No? Then perhaps you have genealogy or local history interests in southeastern Wisconsin or other German-settled areas of the USA? Or you’ve bumped into handwritten census images, family correspondence, or other historical documents that seem to be almost written in “normal,” readable cursive, but some—or a lot—of the letters just don’t make sense? Would you like to be able to decipher these records? Then whether your name is Smith or Schmidt, you need to learn a bit about Kurrent, the standard handwriting style of the German-speaking world from around the seventeenth- until the early twentieth-century.

And to make things more confusing, writers of German didn’t always use the Kurrent script. Sometimes they employed “English cursive,” also known as “Latin script,” similar to some of the well-known American and English writing styles of the time, and it’s not unusual to see documents created in both the USA and “the old country” that employ a mix of Kurrent and English cursive styles in the same document.

Here’s a practical example. Take a look at the following list of names, recorded in elegant cursive on page 1 of the 1855 Wisconsin State Census for Mequon, Ozaukee County:

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Correction: Laura M. Clark

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

“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.

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February History Fun!

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

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.

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O!…Canada? History Mystery! No. 3

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 14 Comments

Jonathan M. Clark was born…where?

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?:

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The Clark Family in 1850, part 3

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 10 Comments

Where y’all from? 

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 →

Rev. Woodworth’s Autobiography

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

James W. Woodworth (1813-1893) and his brother Ephraim were among the earliest settlers in Mequon. They came from Nova Scotia, as did several other early Mequon settlers and families, including Isaac Bigelow, Daniel Strickland and Stephen Loomer. On March 1, 1838, J. W. Woodworth married fellow Nova Scotia emigrant and Mequon neighbor Mary Cerena Loomer. The marriage was believed to be the first Christian marriage in old Washington county and was performed by Mary Turck Clark’s father, Peter Turck, “an anabaptist preacher.”

J. W. Woodworth, like so many Protestant Christians of his era, was a man in search of a powerful and authentic connection to God. He found his answer in the 1830s and ’40s through Methodism. And, after many years of intense self-instruction, camp meetings, private prayer and preaching at local worship services, Woodworth was certified as a Methodist minister.

For much of his life Rev. Woodworth kept a diary of both the spiritual and mundane events of his life. He published the diary in Milwaukee in 1878 as My Path and the Way the Lord Led Me.  Continue reading →