1830s

“Dear Santa,”

/ Genealogist & Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

The Clark House Historian’s Christmas Wish List…

Kriss Kringle’s Christmas Tree [title page], E. Ferrett & Co., Philadelphia, 1845. Library of Congress

I grew up in the Chicago suburbs, and I remember the holiday thrill of riding the Chicago & Northwestern commuter train downtown with my parents, and then walking into the majestic State Street headquarters of Chicago’s grandest department store, Marshall Field & Company. Our mission? A trip up to the “toy floor” at Field’s, where we would wait in line to tell Santa all the wonderful things we would like to receive for Christmas that year.1

It goes without saying that I haven’t been able to fit on Santa’s lap for a very long time. But as the Clark House Historian, I still have holiday dreams and wishes, and today I’d like to share some of them with you. Who knows, perhaps Santa will work his magic once again?

(Official disclaimer: I do not serve on the JCH Board of Directors, or any of its committees. This is my Christmas daydream, a fantasy of what I’d like to see unfold at my favorite museum, given unlimited resources. And besides, as the great Chicago architect and city planner Daniel Burnham famously said: “Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood!”)

My list is organized into several parts, the first of these is…

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November! already?

/ Genealogist & Historian Reed Perkins.

The Clark House Historian at his desk, wondering where October went…1

It’s been over a month since our last Clark House Historian post! Sorry about that. It’s not that I haven’t been busy with JCH writing and organizing. I have been. But most of my work for the last month has been done behind the scenes as the Jonathan Clark House graphic designer and webmaster.

For a good roundup of what’s been going on, please head over to our JCH official website and click on the News & Events page for details.

And that’s not all…

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

/ Genealogist & 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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Talking about the Old Military Road, the DAR…and JMC

/ Genealogist & Historian Reed Perkins. / 3 Comments

UPDATED October 5, 2024, at 9;30 pm to correct a number of typos and other infelicities.

Phew! What a busy September! I got to talk about some very interesting topics last month, to some very enthusiastic and attentive audiences. Lots of work, but very enjoyable. The first of these events was my September 13, 2024, after-dinner presentation at the Fall Workshop of the Wisconsin Society, Daughters of the American Revolution (WSDAR). My topic was “Building the Military Road, Wisconsin Territory’s First Federal Road.”

Photo credit: Laura Rexroth

I incorporated into the talk some important parts of the 1830s and ’40s army and road-building information that I’ve blogged about here at CHH, as well as new primary source materials and a whole bunch of relevant photographs and illustrations.

The WSDAR and the Military Road

An important, ongoing part of the WSDAR’s mission over the decades is historic preservation and education. The Wisconsin Society DAR’s main historic preservation effort involves the care and presentation of the last bit of Fort Winnebago still standing, the historic Fort Winnebago Surgeon’s Quarters.

“Fortifying the Border,” slide from my “Old Military Road” presentation.

This image of Fort Winnebago, at the Portage between the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers, was created in the mid-nineteenth century and reproduced on a 1909 postcard. In the detail shown here, the building that is now the WSDAR’s historic Fort Winnebago Surgeon’s Quarters museum is indicated by green arrow. The uncropped full image—including a view of the Historic Indian Agency House—is available from the Library of Congress.

The WSDAR also has an interest in Wisconsin’s Old Military Road that dates back at least to 1930, when Columbia County’s Wau-Bun Chapter, WSDAR placed a series of handsome cast-steel markers along their portion of the route of the Old Military Road. As you might imagine, these have suffered from almost a century of Wisconsin weather and random damage or theft. State regent Sandra Snow has made the restoration and replacement of the 1930 markers one of her signature projects. Here’s a before and after of one of those markers:

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CHH news & updates: Sept. 25, 2024

/ Genealogist & Historian Reed Perkins.

Join us at the Cedarburg History Museum this Saturday!

Just a reminder: I’ve been asked back to the Cedarburg History Museum to give another talk in their 2024 Civil War lecture series. My topic will be “They Fought Like Devils” – the Black soldier and Wisconsin’s Civil War experience
, a multi-faceted subject that is often overlooked when discussing Wisconsin’s part in the Civil War. All are invited to the presentation at 6:00 p.m., Saturday, September 28. Seating is limited, so to attend my talk—or any of the CHM free lectures—don’t forget to RSVP to museum director Joel Willems at 
262-377-5856 or joel@cedarburghm.org to reserve a place.

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Sources: The Old Military Road

/ Genealogist & Historian Reed Perkins.

I just put the final edits on my upcoming presentation for the Fall Meeting of the Wisconsin Society, Daughters of the American Revolution. I’ll be talking about Wisconsin’s first federal road—the Old Military Road—and the men that built it, including our own Jonathan M. Clark.

One of my WSDAR presentation slides. From left: JMC’s army post, Fort Howard (Green Bay), JMC’s army enlistment paper, JMC portrait photo.

My talk is scheduled to run for 30 minutes and, as is often the case, I had to cut a lot of information from the presentation in order to keep it inside the time limit. But I don’t want all of those research tidbits to go to waste, so I’m going to post them in a few posts here on the blog. Today, I’m going to list, comment on, and link to some of the key sources that helped me put my WSDAR presentation together. If you have any interest in Wisconsin’s early roads and related transportation issues, I encourage you to check out these sources. Most are freely available online, and I’ll provide links where I can. Happy reading!

Durbin & Durbin, 1984

To my knowledge, the best, most detailed, and most comprehensively researched and documented article about the Military Road remains “Wisconsin’s Military Road: Its Genesis and Construction” by Richard D. Durbin and Elizabeth Durbin. It was published in Wisconsin Magazine of History (WMH), Vol. 68, No. 1, Fall, 1984.

The Durbins appear to have consulted a huge number of primary sources, especially the deep collections of the Wisconsin Historical Society (WHS) and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Their article is lavishly illustrated with vintage and modern maps, and will allow the reader to retrace the path of the original Military Road through modern Wisconsin. The authors also document in great detail the many twists and turns of the road’s legislative and appropriations history and the military’s involvement in the project.

Durbin and Durbin is essential reading for this subject, and can be read for free via the Wisconsin Magazine of History Archives at WHS’s excellent website (link to article). And speaking of the Wisconsin Magazine of History…

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Labor Day – a photo essay

/ Genealogist & Historian Reed Perkins.

Today is Labor Day, the holiday celebrating the working men and women of our nation, and I thought I’d commemorate the day with a lightly-revised re-post of this piece from 2023.

This Labor Day, I’ll be at home, working on my upcoming lectures for the state DAR and the Cedarburg History Museum. Last year, I had to work at our local mercantile establishment. You know, a store kind of like this one, only much bigger, stocked with just about anything you need for modern living:

I don’t really have the day “off” today—too much writing to do—and won’t be marching in a parade, but I’d still like to honor the holiday and salute the American worker, past and present. With that in mind, let’s revisit some of the nineteenth-century occupations we’ve talked about previously at Clark House Historian, highlighting a few of the many skills, trades, and occupations common during the Clark House era.

Since it is a holiday, I’m not going to add long commentaries to each photo. Enjoy the photo galleries, and click each gallery to open larger versions of each image. And click the highlighted links to visit the original CHH posts, filled with lots more information about the different skills, tools, and jobs, and the full image credits.

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CHH news and updates: August 28, 2024

/ Genealogist & Historian Reed Perkins. / 3 Comments

I know it’s been a while since my last post, but I’ve been busy! Jonathan Clark House executive director Nina Look and I just finished the latest JCH newsletter, and there’s a lot of Clark House history coming your way this fall, both here on the blog, and “live and in person.” In particular, I’m currently racing to finish not one, but two, illustrated presentations that I’ll be giving in September.

JMC, the Old Military Road, and the DAR

I’ve been asked to speak at the Fall Workshop of the Wisconsin Society, Daughters of the American Revolution. My topic will be “Building the Military Road, Wisconsin Territory’s First Federal Road.” I’ll be incorporating much of the 1830s and ’40s army and road-building information that I’ve blogged about here at CHH, as well as new primary source materials and contemporary illustrations.

The presentation will take place after dinner, Friday, September 13, at the WSDAR Fall Workshop in Oshkosh. The event is limited to registered DAR members and their guests. My thanks to Wisconsin State Regent Sandra Snow and the members of the WSDAR for their kind invitation to speak.

But wait…there’s more!

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Not our Jonathan: other “J. M. Clarks” in 1830s & ’40s Wisconsin (part 1)

/ Genealogist & Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

“Estray. […] J. M. Clark” advertisement, Southport [later Kenosha] Telegraph, Dec. 26, 1843, page 4

Hey! How did Mequon’s Jonathan M. Clark end up with a stray red and white heifer on his farm in…Pleasant Prairie, the most southeasterly township in all of Wisconsin, some 56 miles south of the Jonathan Clark House? The short answer is: he didn’t. The man that placed this “stray cow” advertisement in the December 16, 1843, issue of the Southport (later Kenosha) Telegraph was is not “our” J. M. Clark.

So many J. M. Clarks

Throughout the nineteenth century, many men seem to have been referred to, at least in print, by the initial letters of their first and middle names. The builder of Mequon’s Jonathan Clark House was no exception. Many of the documents made during his lifetime refer to him as “J. M. Clark,” and he often signed his name that way as well.1

“J. M. Clark,” signature of Jonathan M. Clark, from his final U.S. naturalization papers, 1853.

Unless the researcher is careful, it’s easy to make assumptions and presume that the “J. M. Clark” that built our historic Mequon home in 1848 is identical with the other “J. M. Clark” men that appear in various Wisconsin Territory documents, land patents, newspapers, and histories. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. To be certain that the “J. M. Clark” referred to in a particular source is “our” Jonathan M. Clark, we need to understand the “who, what, where and when” of each document or event that may—or may not— have involved our Jonathan.

I’m sure my list of suspects is incomplete, but (surprise!) it has turned out to be much longer and more complicated than anticipated. With that in mind, I think I’m going to need several CHH posts to sort out some of the most easily mistaken “J. M. Clark” men that lived and worked in the central and southeastern parts of Wisconsin Territory, yet were definitely not our J. M. Clark, the man born in Lower Canada (or Vermont) in 1812 that went on to build the historic Jonathan Clark House in Mequon in the 1840s.2

Let’s start with earliest and most northerly of these settlers, the first of several Christian ministers surnamed Clark that had links to Wisconsin Territory army posts that were home to our Jonathan M. Clark and his comrades during their service with the U. S. Army’s 5th regiment of infantry, 1833-1836.

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

/ Genealogist & 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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