1810s

I’ve been busy…at the Portage! (part 2)

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

In a recent CHH post I wrote about my Saturday, August 16 visit to, and presentation at, the WSDAR’s excellent Fort Winnebago Surgeons Quarters historic site. That was worth a road trip in itself. But since I was heading up to Portage, I decided to make a history weekend out of the occasion. So on Friday the 15th, I spent a fine few hours touring the nearby Historic Indian Agency House and museum, just a short distance from the Surgeon’s Quarters across the old channel of the Fox River.

Historic Indian Agency House, 2025. Photo credit: Reed Perkins

The Historic Indian Agency House

The Historic Indian Agency House (HIAH) is one of Wisconsin’s oldest museums and a “must see”, for those of you interested in the early days of the Wisconsin Territory and the history of the state’s original Native American inhabitants and their forced removal during white settlement in the 1820s, ’30s and beyond. Like the nearby Fort Winnebago and its remaining Surgeon’s Quarters, the story of the HIAH overlaps and intersects with the story of Jonathan M. Clark and his 1833-1836 military service at Fort Winnebago’s headquarters post, Fort Howard, in Green Bay.

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I’ve been busy…at the Portage! (part 1)

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

It’s been a while, I know! One thing led to another and this summer ended up being a very quiet summer here on the CHH blog, with just a post or two over the past few months. My apologies to you all. However, I have been very busy “behind the scenes,” reading, researching and writing all summer long, and I have lots of new historical information and stories to share with you.

Fort Winnebago Surgeons Quarters—and more

One of the projects that has kept me busy this summer was researching and preparing a presentation that I gave last Saturday, at the historic Fort Winnebago Surgeons Quarters museum as part of their The People, the Portage and the Road event. Originally, my talk was going to be a lightly-revised update of my September, 2024 talk at the Wisconsin Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution’s Fall Workshop in Oshkosh.

That talk, “Building the Military Road,” contained about 45 minutes of detailed information about Wisconsin’s first federal road, and the men that built it—including our own Sgt. Jonathan M. Clark—tightly squeezed into about a half-hour time slot. The presentation was well-received, and I was invited to repeat that talk at this August, 2025, event at the WSDAR’s Fort Winnebago Surgeons Quarters museum in Portage.

However! The August 16th event was also going to be a reunion of the descendants of François LeRoi (aka Francis LeRoy or Roy)—the man that first built and occupied the historic surgeon’s quarters (1816-1829), and it was suggested that I include some Francis LeRoy related information in my talk, a very reasonable request. Since I already knew quite a bit about the Military Road, the Portage, and the life and times at Forts Howard and Winnebago in the 1830s, I thought I would just need to make a few minor cuts to my original talk, find a few, possibly obscure or unknown, LeRoi documents, add them to the presentation and, well, that would be just the thing! Well…

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Hail, Smiling morn! – 2025 edition

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / Leave a comment

Happy New Year to all, and best wishes for an excellent 2025. I thought we’d start the year with a lightly edited re-post of an earlier CHH essay about a cheerful, festive song, one that may have been familiar to our Mequon settlers in the 1840s.1

A spot of Spofforth to ring in the New Year…

Our New Year’s sing-along number is “Hail Smiling morn” by the English composer Reginald Spofforth (1769-1827), a vocal quartet featured in the second part of the Milwaukee Beethoven Society’s March 23rd, 1843, premiere concert:

Milwaukee Weekly Sentinel March 15 1843, page 2. Click to open larger image in new window.

Spofforth was a man of many talents, but was particularly known for his glees. A glee is a kind of convivial part-song, typically for three or more voices and usually—but not always—sung without accompaniment. I’ll have more to say about this particular composer and piece later, but for now, it’s well enough to know that “Hail Smiling morn” is—according to musicologist Nicholas Temperly—”possibly the most popular glee in the entire repertory,” and that’s saying something!

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Who’s Who at Forts Howard & Winnebago, 1829-1837

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins.

I’m getting back into the blogging groove, and one of my first projects is to continue our series “Not our Jonathan: other “J. M. Clarks” in 1830s & ’40s Wisconsin.” And in my research for that, I’m looking into the identities of one or more men named “J. M. Clark” that served as chaplain at the 5th Regiment’s post at Fort Winnebago.

An important primary source for this research are the monthly “Returns” or reports, sent from the 5th Regiment’s posts at Forts Howard and Winnebago back to the army’s chief bureaucrat, the Adjutant General, in Washington, D.C. We’ve examined these Returns several times on Clark House Historian, including this post from 2016 which discussed this October, 1833, bit of U.S. Army record-keeping, the Return of the Regiment [for the 5th Regiment Infantry, at Fort Howard], October, 1833, verso:

NARA, Washington, D.C.; Returns from Regular Army Infantry Regiments, June 1821 – December 1916; Microfilm Serial: M665; Roll: 54 Military Year : 1832-1842. Return of the Regiment [for the 5th Regiment Infantry, at Fort Howard], October, 1833, verso, from Ancestry.com (pay site).

What’s that name???

For our purposes, one of the most useful features of these monthly Returns is the top left section of the form, which lists the officers of the regiment by [Company], Rank, Name, Post or Station, and with a space for Remarks about their assignments, temporary duty, leaves of absence, and so on. There’s a lot of useful information here, especially the names of the officers and the companies that they lead. But click the image to open a larger version of this image, and see if you can actually read those names:

On the one hand, the regimental clerk that filled out this October, 1833, form had pretty tidy penmanship, and the digitized microfilm image is not too bad. But even so, some of the names are hard to decipher. And knowing these names can be really useful, for example when looking for correspondence between these regimental officers and the Adjutant General’s office in D.C. (See our post here, for more on this archive.)

So how do we learn “Who’s Who” on the monthly “Returns from Post” and “Returns of the Regiment”? Fortunately, the government put all that info into a series of very useful books, which are now available, for free, online…

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Monday: Map Day! – Lower Canada’s Eastern Townships in 1842

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

The Search for JMC’s roots continues!1 For the last few months, I’ve spent hour after hour reading through hundreds of digitized pages of the various manuscript land petitions and related documents that form the Land Petitions of Lower Canada, 1764-1841 database at Library and Archives of Canada (LAC).2

The good news is that I have found a lot of information about various early Clark (or Clarke) surname immigrants that petitioned for land—and actually settled on it—in Lower Canada during the relevant years of circa 1791-1840. Many of the documents that I’ve found contain information about these Clark immigrants, their families, and from whence they come. This is important, as we need to sort the Patriot, Vermont-related Clark families from other Clark immigrants from New York and New England (including American Loyalists), and the various Anglo-Canadian Clark families that sought land in the Eastern Townships at the same time. So, you know what that means…

We need another map!

Now that we have all this data, we need a way to organize and present it. And since so many of our rejected candidates earn their “Nope, not our Clark family” status because they settled far away from Stanstead, I thought it was time to make a big map of where these various Clark petitioners for Lower Canada land actually ended up. Then, in theory, we can eliminate the Clark families that settled “too far” from Stanstead (and adjacent Derby, Vermont), and focus on the Clarks that settled in or near Stanstead itself.

It’s going to take a while to assemble and present all the data. So we need a big, easy to read map created around the time of Jonathan Clark’s childhood and/or youth, from about 1812 until his arrival in New York state in 1831. (The latter date is flexible, as long as we find a map that predates the reorganization of the townships into larger counties in 1847.) We’ve presented some great Lower Canada maps here at CHH but, as is typical of that era, if they are accurate and detailed, they also tend to be visually “busy” and hard to read. But, dear readers, I finally found just the thing…

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Searching for JMC’s roots: Daily life in the Stanstead area, 1784-1817

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins.

A recent CHH comment from reader Meredith Johanson brought an interesting local history newspaper article to my attention. It’s from page 8 of the Sherbrooke [Québec] Daily Record of May 13, 1911, now available as a digital image at BAnQ.

The article was compiled by H. I Bullock, of Beebe Junction, Stanstead county, Québec. The compiler was a descendant of one of the earliest white settler families in the Eastern Townships of Lower Canada, the Ruiter family and, as of 1911, s/he possessed a number of historic Ruiter family documents.

The contents of several of these documents are presented in detail in the article, and include discussions of Ruiter family settlement in the Stanstead area, how farms and homes were created in the heavily-timbered forests of the “New Townships,” various local trades and supplies and their respective wages and costs, and early military affairs, with local militia rosters from 1809 and 1817.

The article is focused on Ruiter family documents, but many other early settlers are mentioned by name, including one William Clark, and several men with the surname Merrill. As far as we know—at the moment—none of these men are directly related to our Jonathan Morrell/Merrill Clark. But the information in this 1911 article does give a hint of what life was like for the first Stanstead-area settlers—such as Jonathan M. Clark’s still-unknown parents—in the early 1800s.

Bartlett, W. H, artist, A First Settlement, drawing, brown wash on wove paper, c. 1840, National Gallery of Canada, public domain.

I have made no cuts to the article, and since the original is long, I have not included extra commentary. I have added more white space between paragraphs for ease of reading, made a few clarifications and citations in the Notes that follow, and added an illustration not found in the original. Here’s the complete transcription. I hope you find it interesting:

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JMC: The missing years, 1836-1839

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

I’m still on the search for Jonathan M. Clark’s parents and other kin somewhere in the early-19th-century wilderness of northern Vermont and southern Québec. I hope to publish more about that here in the near future.

As part of that project, I’ve spent quite a bit of time over the past few months organizing and re-examining the many research materials that I’ve gathered about JMC and his world, and I’ve constructed a whole bunch of genealogies for early Vermont, New Hampshire, and Lower Canada families named Clark that turn out—alas!—not to be related to our Jonathan M. Clark.

More mysteries…

Along with the mystery of JMC’s still-unknown family and childhood, Clark House museum director Nina Look and I have been trying to chase down some rumors that suggest Jonathan Clark may have spent his three years between mustering out of the U.S. Army (in 1836), and purchasing land at the land office in Milwaukee (in late 1839), as a surveyor in or near the area around Fort Winnebago, Columbia County, Wisconsin Territory. At the moment, that story remains a mystery, too. I’ll let you know if we find out more.

Anyway, with all these facts, rumors and mysteries—and many, many others—rolling around in my head, I thought it might be useful to outline JMC’s life in a handy, chronological timeline. Here’s a draft of that timeline, including what we do—and don’t—know about Jonathan M. Clark’s whereabouts and activities during his lifetime, as of July 1, 2024. I’ve included links to some relevant Clark House Historian posts where possible; please click on them for more information.

Childhood & Youth

November 28, 1812, (possibly, 1811) born to unknown parents, in or near Derby, VT, or Stanstead, Lower Canada

• Late-1812 to early-1831: JMC’s childhood whereabouts and activities unknown for 18+ years, with one possible exception:

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Nope, not our Clark family – Ft. Winnebago edition

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 5 Comments

Here’s another addition to our list of various Clark-surnamed people that show up in our search for Jonathan M. Clark’s kin, but we now know (with reasonable certainty) were not JMC’s parents or other relatives.

Today’s “Clark” subjects are connected to the history of the U.S. Army’s Fort Winnebago, and the surrounding area of Columbia County, Wisconsin Territory, during the decade of the 1830s.

Fort Winnebago was one of several posts in the upper Midwest garrisoned by the army’s Fifth Regiment of Infantry during Jonathan M. Clark’s three-year term in the army at Fort Howard (1833-1836). From about 1835-1836, the soldiers of the 5th regiment were responsible for cutting Wisconsin’s original east-west Military Road from Ft. Howard at Green Bay, to Ft. Winnebago at the portage between the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers, and thence to Ft. Crawford at Prairie du Chien. In the 1830s, in addition to recent recruit Jonathan M. Clark, at least two other men with the Clark surname held positions with the 5th regiment in Wisconsin. Neither of these notable Clark men—it turns out—is related to JMC.

I’m not going into great detail for each subject, but I’ll try and give enough info to make clear whom we are talking about, and why they are being added to the “Nope, not our Clark family…” list. Leading today’s installment is one of the 5th regiment’s senior officers and members of his pioneering family:

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Finding JMC’s roots: Vintage first names puzzle

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins.

No new research today. I’m celebrating a big event with family, and taking a few days off from emails and major blog posts while I do.

“They just don’t name ’em like they used to…”

I’m loath to leave loyal blog readers without some Clark House History to while away the time until our next big CHH post, so I made another word search puzzle.

Your assignment today is to find the vintage Stanstead-area settler first names, all of which are documented from Clark-era sources in and around Stanstead, Lower Canada, circa 1790-1840, and many of which will feature in future posts as we search for JMC’s roots.

As in our previous post, just click the image to open and print your own copies of this version of the puzzle. Or, if you’d like to play online, just click this link: https://thewordsearch.com/puzzle/6173938/stanstead-first-names-c-1790-1840/

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Searching for JMC’s roots: Navigating the “Land Petitions of Lower Canada, 1764-1841”

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 3 Comments

We believe that Jonathan M. Clark was born or raised, or both, in or near the Township of Stanstead, Lower Canada, in 1811 or 1812. Who his parents were, where they came from, and what happened to them, are important questions that we want to answer. I’ve been searching the Library and Archives of Canada (LAC) database of Land Petitions of Lower Canada, 1764-1841, and I have located what I believe are the earliest founding documents for Stanstead. Before we begin our examination of these documents, looking for signs of early settlers named Clark or Clarke (and their relatives and neighbors), I thought I should share a few notes about what we are looking for, and how we can find it again, in case anyone would like to check or build on the work we’re doing here.

Finding the documents

How do you find records of your early Eastern Townships pioneer? Begin by clicking over to the Library and Archives Canada (LAC) database called Land Petitions of Lower Canada, 1764-1841. The (old but still operating1) home page for that database looks like this:

Read the information on this page. It’s not long, but it’s very helpful. One of the essential points to note is the description of what is—and is not—indexed in this database:

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