1830s

Monday: Map Day! – Wisconsin Territory, ready for its 1st census, 1836

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

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The vast Wisconsin Territory originally included all the current states of Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa, and that part of the Dakotas east of the Missouri River. The Wisconsin Territory officially existed from July 3, 1836 until the current—and smaller—State of Wisconsin was established on May 29, 1848. The history of the territory prior to statehood, and especially before mid-1836, is complicated. For more information you might begin with this overview. Here’s an outline map of the territory:

[Map of Wisconsin Territory, April 20, 1836] original from Wisconsin Historical Society, Wisconsin Historical Collections, 11, this image from Wisconsin Historical Collections, 13:248.

Section 4 of the April 20, 1836 act of Congress that created the Wisconsin Territory, required that

Previously to the first election, the governor of the Territory shall cause the census or enumeration of the inhabitants of the several counties in the territory to be taken or made by the sheriffs of said counties, respectively, and returns thereof made by the said sheriffs, to the governor.

Act of Congress, April 20, 1836, quoted in Wisconsin Historical Collections, 13:247.

With such a large expanse of land, and relatively small number of white inhabitants, the Wisconsin Territory of 1836 was divided into only a few counties. Two of these, Dubuque and Des Moines counties, lay to the west of the Mississippi river and comprised the Iowa District of the Wisconsin Territory. (Both were enumerated in the 1836 territorial census, but I’ll let Iowa history fans follow up on those counties.) Here a map of the 1836 Wisconsin Territory counties lying east of the Mississippi River:

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Monday: Map Day! – Mequon’s First Survey, 1836-1837

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins.

I love maps, all kinds of maps. I especially like comparing various maps of the same area as it changes over time. I have collected a number of maps that illuminate various aspects of Clark family and Clark House history, and I thought I’d start posting some for you all to use and enjoy.

Fortunately, we are in a digital golden age of historical maps, many available for free download and use. Among the best sites are the online map collections at the Library of Congress and the New York Public Library. Take some time to click the links and browse.

But today’s map comes from another source, the Bureau of Land Management’s General Land Office website. Previously, we discussed the BLM/GLO as the go-to site for land patent indexes with exact descriptions and images of government land patents issued in the 30 Public Lands States. Click the link to start at the BLM/GLO homepage, then click on “Survey Search.” That will take you to this page:

Notice how “Surveys” is highlighted in black text in the left side column. For a sample search, I’ve entered “Wisconsin” as a state, and the exact town and range numbers for the Town of Mequon (T9N-R21E). Click the orange “Search Surveys” button, and you’ll get this results page:

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Census Records for the In-Between Years: 1842

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 7 Comments

Don’t Forget the (Free!) Territorial and State Censuses

Although they are not as informative as the decennial federal censuses, Wisconsin’s territorial and state census returns can offer useful information about the growth and development of places—such as Mequon—and can add to what we know about a family—like the Clarks—and their neighbors at various times between the once-a-decade federal census population schedules. For a nice explanation and overview of federal, territorial and state census history in Wisconsin, please go to the Wisconsin census FamilySearch.org wiki page. This is an invaluable first stop for locating these records. Be sure to peruse the lists of which records have been preserved for which counties; not all census records have survived. And the Wisconsin Historical Society has a similar page of useful Census Research Tips

The FamilySearch.org Wiki page is kept pretty current, but there have been a few changes that may not be reflected there yet. In one positive development (especially for the safer-at-home researcher), it appears that all of the microfilmed state and territorial censuses are now viewable—at no cost—via the FamilySearch.org portal. (Note that you will have to use a free account to be able to view the digitized images online. So create an account if you don’t already have one, and login before you search the indexes and click the links for the multitude of digitized microfilms.)

Here are some links and tips to speed your search. For the FamilySearch.org index, click here: United States, Wisconsin online census collections. You should land on a page that looks like this:

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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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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 →

Fort Howard, November 1833

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins.

Previous posts have discussed Jonathan M. Clark’s enlistment in the U.S. Army’s Fifth Regiment of Infantry, Company K (part 1, part 2, part 3) and his arrival at Fort Howard (Green Bay), in the Michigan (later Wisconsin) Territory (part 1, part 2, part 3) on October 20, 1833. Let’s rejoin the regiment and see what kept Co. K busy during Pvt. Clark’s first full month on duty, November, 1833. Continue reading →

Map of Ouisconsin Territory, 1836

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins.

UPDATED, February 11, 2024, to include a revised annotated map. But for the full update—with additional notes and corrections—please see the most recent version of this, posted on February 12, 2024.

In September, 1836, Sgt. Jonathan M. Clark was discharged from the U.S. Army at “Ft. Hamilton,” Wisconsin Territory, after serving his three-year term of service with Co. K, Fifth Regiment of Infantry.  One year later, in the autumn of 1837, Jonathan’s future wife Mary Turck would make the long trip from Palmyra, New York, to Milwaukee and finally Mequon, Washington County, Wisconsin, with her parents Peter and Rachael Turck and six younger siblings. By the end of 1840 Jonathan and Mary would be married and starting their family in Mequon.

That seems simple enough, until you take a moment to wonder how much Jonathan—or especially Mary and her family—knew about this new Wisconsin Territory.  Jonathan had been in the territory since October, 1833, building portions of the military road along the Fox River waterway from Ft. Howard (Green Bay) towards Ft. Winnebago (near modern Portage). As a road building soldier, Jonathan probably had seen—or helped draw—a variety of maps of the military road and its vicinity. But for a better overview of the larger territory, Jonathan or Mary might have sought out a map such as this:

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Fort Howard, October 1833 (part 1)

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins.

Jonathan M. Clark arrived and reported for duty at Fort Howard, the headquarters of the U.S. Army’s Fifth Regiment of Infantry on Sunday, October 20, 1833. He served there until his  discharge at the end of service in 1836. What did he do for those three years?

After the national excitement over the brief Blackhawk War in 1832, the northwest frontier was generally calm. The federal government continued to negotiate treaties with the Native Americans, urging them ever westward. Most Indians and white settlers observed the treaty boundaries and there was only the occasional “scare” from the original inhabitants. So what were the soldiers to do?

Let’s take a further look at Ft. Howard’s “Return of the Fifth Regiment of Infantry” for the month of October, 1833 and see what we can find. Here’s the front side: Continue reading →

Pvt. Clark, reporting for duty

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

One of the most useful facts we discovered in looking at Jonathan M. Clark’s entry in the U.S. Army’s Register of Enlistments was that Jonathan was assigned to the Fifth Infantry, Company K. In the 1830s, the Fifth Infantry’s mission was to protect the expanding northwestern frontier.

The regiment’s companies were stationed at Ft. Dearborn (present day Chicago), Ft. Howard (Green Bay) and Ft. Winnebago (at the portage between the Fox and Wisconsin rivers, near the city of Portage). It was the regiment’s job to protect the settlers from the Native Americans (and vice versa), keeping the peace along the boundaries between the two peoples, as established in a series of treaties that, for the most part, continuously pushed the Indians farther and farther westward, toward the Mississippi River and beyond. Continue reading →