1830s

Searching for JMC’s roots in Eastern Township sources: books (part 2)

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

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.

Continue reading →

Searching for JMC’s roots: Québec land & records

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

A tale in four news clippings

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.

Continue reading →

Searching for JMC’s roots: getting organized

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 3 Comments

I’ve spent the last four or five days deep in the Library and Archives Canada (LAC) database of Land Petitions of Lower Canada, 1764-1841.

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…

Continue reading →

Monday: Map Day! Bouchette, Jr.’s map of Upper & Lower Canada, 1831

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

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).

Continue reading →

Searching for JMC’s roots in Eastern Township sources: books (part 1)

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 6 Comments

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.

Continue reading →

Labor Day – a photo essay

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 3 Comments

Even thought it’s Labor Day, the holiday celebrating the working men and women of our nation, I’ll be at work, back at our local mercantile establishment. You know, a store kind of like this one, stocked with just about anything you need for modern living:

I don’t have the day off, 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 much commentary today. Enjoy the photos, and click the links to visit the original CHH posts with lots more information about the different skills and jobs, and for full image credits.

Continue reading →

On the northern frontier: (resuming) the search for JMC’s roots

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 7 Comments

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.

Continue reading →

Bonniwell background: Chatham, Kent 1832

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

Time for some housekeeping. I’m trying to wrap up my “brief” survey of the documentary life of Mequon pioneer (and Clark House brother-in-law) Alfred T. Bonniwell, and I need to thin out my collection of “not-specifically-Alfred, but still interesting and Bonniwell-related” documents that currently crowd my “to do” list. Today’s gem is a view and description of the Bonniwell family’s hometown of Chatham as it was in 1832, the year they left England and sailed to North America:

Continue reading →

1836: Astounding Produce News!

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins.

While researching the life of one of Mequon’s first white settlers, Isham Day, I ran across the following breathless bit of regional puffery and promotion, penned by Milwaukee co-founder Byron Kilbourn. It’s from page 2 of the November 17, 1836, edition of the Milwaukee Advertiser:

Lawyer Pettibone has, indeed, grown some astounding turnips (“Ruta Baga”), ‘taters, and carrots in the fertile soil of Milwaukee. Likewise Mr. Douglass with his enormous radishes and “common English” turnips. Have others done anything comparable? Indeed they have, and Mr. Kilbourn has the details…

Continue reading →