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.
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:
UPDATED Nov. 9, 2023 to correct Mrs. Day’s first name. It’s Catherine (not Caroline) Matilda Day.
Continuing our search for Jonathan M. Clark’s supposed ancestry in Stanstead, Eastern Townships, Lower Canada—and before the deluge of original, mostly handwritten, documents from the Land Petitions of Lower Canada, 1764-1841 begins—we have another interesting and useful book to add to the first installment of our book list.
Day. 1863. Pioneers of the Eastern Townships1 Day, Mrs. C. M. [Catherine Matilda], Pioneers of the Eastern townships : a work containing official and reliable information respecting the formation of settlements, with incidents in their early history, and details of adventures, perils and deliverances, Montreal, 1863. Online via Canadiana, accessed September 24, 2023.
This early collection of Eastern Township history is not to be confused with the same author’s longer and more comprehensive History of the Eastern Townships Province of Quebec of 1869. Today’s 1863 book, only about 170 pages, is not intended to be a broad survey of early Eastern Township history like its 1869 successor, and it does not have any Stanstead- or Clark-specific information. But researchers seeking information on early Lower Canada history, land patent process, and settlement will find Pioneers of the Eastern townships to be very helpful and illuminating in two distinct ways.
As you know by now, we believe that Jonathan M. Clark was born or raised—or both—in or near the Township of Stanstead, Lower Canada. Who his parents were, where they came from, and what happened to them afterwards, are important questions that we have yet to answer. There are two main stumbling blocks. On the one hand, reliable birth, marriage, death and similar records for this part of Lower Canada and northern Vermont do not begin to appear on a regular basis until a decade or more after JMC’s birth in 1811/1812. And at the same time, the CLARK surname is unbelievably common in New England and the adjacent parts of English-speaking Canada. There are just too many Clark families listed in relevant indexes and archives to even begin a useful search; for a productive search, we need a way to narrow the list to only those Clarks that might be related to JMC.
So one of my first steps in this (renewed) search is to go Clark-hunting among the larger archival sources of Lower Canada, record the potentially-relevant Clark-related information and (full) names that I find, and make a big list of persons named Clark that were in or near Stanstead between about 1790-1830. If we get really lucky, we”ll find specific records of JMC, his parents, and his family. More likely, we’ll end up with a massive list of people named Clark, and from that list we can see which of these Clarks stand out as likely suspects, identify—where possible—which Clarks are definitely not “our” Clarks, and proceed from there.
For the next several weeks our name collecting expedition will be focused on the Library and Archives Canada (LAC) database of Land Petitions of Lower Canada, 1764-1841. I suspect many of our U.S. readers will see that and wonder: why waste time in that seemingly arcane archive? (Our Canadian readers will probably nod their heads and think, yes, that sounds like a very logical place to look for early Clark and Stanstead documents).
A history in 4 newspaper items
So for those readers whose knowledge of Canada history is spotty at best, let me give a very, very brief explanation of a few bits of pertinent local history, including the Loyalist issue, how Québec became Lower Canada, and how JMC’s ancestors—and their relatives and neighbors—might have been enticed to move to Lower Canada, using four contemporary newspaper clippings.
I’ve searched this database before—and found some interesting bits and pieces—but the enormous quantity of digitized page images (sometimes hundreds of images in a single file), the limited name-only search indexing, and the somewhat quirky image-browsing interface, made results very hit and miss. Which is too bad, because there are treasures of historical and genealogical information to be found in the files.
So—confronted by such a massive pile of documents and files–what’s a historian to do? Well, desperate times call for desperate measures, so…
Today’s spectacular Map of the Provinces of Lower & Upper Canada.1 was created by Joseph Bouchette, Jr., et. al., and published in London in 1831. It was made as a companion to his father’s exhaustive written description of the same territory, British Dominions of North America, also published in 1831.2
Bouchette, Joseph Jun., Joseph Bouchette [Sr.], et. al., Map of the Provinces of Lower & Upper Canada, London, James Wyld, 1831.David Rumsey Map Collection.3
We are particularly interested in this map as it shows the British possessions in North America—essentially present-day Canada—as they were understood in 1831, the year JMC migrated to New York state, and a year before the Bonniwell family arrived in Lower Canada (Québec). And when compared to Bouchette, Sr.’s great map of Upper and Lower Canada in 1815, it illustrates the rapid growth of British North America, and the Eastern Townships, in the decade and a half since the end of the War of 1812 (1812-1815).
If this were an academic thesis (don’t worry: it’s not, it’s still a blog), one of the first things we’d do at the start of a project like this is create a “literature review” and accompanying annotated bibliography. Now that we’re restarting our search for JMC’s roots in the border area of northern Vermont and the Eastern Townships of southern Québec, circa 1790-1840, I thought it would be smart to do something similar, but less formal. Over the next several posts we’re going to sort and prioritize the various sources that look useful, and find a way to organize those sources—with their proper bibliographical citations—in a way that will serve us over time.
The Clark House Historian, growing old as he searches for Jonathan M. Clark’s roots…1
Today’s post is Part 1 (of many) of our hybrid literature review and annotated bibliography that—we hope—will finally lead us to JMC’s as-yet-unknown parents, ancestors, possible siblings, and kin.2 We begin with some Lower Canada—Eastern Townships books that I have found more (or less) useful.
The scene above is A settler’s hut on the frontier, by W. H.Bartlett and R. Sands, published in London in 1841.1 Based on the known locations of some of Bartlett’s other, similar images, published at about the same time, it is almost certain that the scene depicted was drawn from life in Lower Canada (modern day Québec), and possibly in or near Stanstead, or one of the neighboring Eastern Townships of Lower Canada.
The landscape, dwelling, and people in this scene would have been very familiar to young Jonathan M. Clark. They are the physical and human landscape of his first three decades of life—from about 1812 to 1831—in the vast and sparsely settled north woods of Stanstead, Lower Canada, and nearby Derby, northern Vermont.
I have been searching Vermont and Lower Canada for Jonathan M. Clark’s parents, possible siblings, or other kin for over seven years, and have not yet been able to identify any. As it’s been a while since the blog focused on JMC’s roots, I thought it was time to organize our previous research, publish new sources and findings, and see if we can get closer to locating the family of the builder and first occupant of Mequon’s 1848 Jonathan Clark House.
Today I’d like to share two rare and unusual official documents, and note how there are early 19th-century Bonniwell family genealogical clues hidden in each.
The Bonniwells and related families in Kent, 1667-1832
The image below is of St. Mary’s Church, Chatham, much as it looked at the time of Alfred T. Bonniwell’s christening there in 1826. It’s likely that the Bonniwells regularly attended services here during their years in Chatham. St. Mary’s has had a long and eventful history as a parish church, and has been reconstructed several times.1
Engraving based on original art by W. Dadson, in Robert Langton’s The Childhood and Youth of Charles Dickens, Manchester, 1883, page 72. GoogleBooks, accessed 1 Aug. 2023.
A surprising number of our early Mequon immigrants had ancestors in southeast England’s venerable Kent county. Early Mequon settlers (and their spouses) from the Ashby, Bonniwell, Dunning, Eastree, Hills, Long, Moss, Munn, Smith and Whitehead families all had roots in Kent, many of them in or around the town of Chatham. For an introductory overview of this, see Monday: Map Day! – the Bonniwells in Kent, featuring a very cool map of the county from 1665, with added annotations that indicate many of the of the family’s various Kent residences, christenings, marriages, and burials over the subsequent decades.2
Family history before the census of 1841
The first modern, “all name,” census of England was enumerated in 1840 and published in 1841 and, as with every succeeding decennial census, the 1841 Census of England and Wales is full of useful information for historians and genealogists. But the Bonniwells left England for North America in 1832, almost a decade before the 1841 census was enumerated. How do we reconstruct and understand family relationships and local history, especially on the female branches of the family tree, before 1841? Today we’ll look at two obscure bureaucratic reports that may offer some useful clues.
I’m still tidying up a longer post on the Great Chatham Fires of 1800 and 1820 and the genealogical clues that may be found in the post-fire documents published in 1801 and 1821. Meanwhile, I learned a new word and thought you might be interested, namely:
A Hoy
The report on the 1800 fire stated that a number of Chatham merchants lost a substantial amount of goods on a hoy. You’re probably familiar with the nautical greeting “Ahoy!”—the sailor’s equivalent of “Hello” or “Hey there!” But this hoy is a noun. What was a hoy? It turns out to be…
Clark House Historian 