…as I prepare my March 9th Civil War presentation for the Cedarburg History Museum, try to sort out the full story of Mequon-Thiensville’s earliest settlers and landowners (including first postmaster John Weston), and look through a bushel of fresh sources in our ongoing search for Jonathan Clark’s kin who hail, we think, from somewhere up around where Derby, Vermont meets Stanstead, Québec.
The Clark House Historian and his crack research team, searching for answers in the written record…1
As you can see, I’ve got work to do in order to dig out from under—and make sense of—the big pile of historical documents that I’ve accumulated over the past several weeks.
So no new CHH post today, but I’ll be back soon with more Clark House history.
Time for a few Random Bits of History: Early Mequon Settlers’ Disambiguation Edition.
John Weston & John Western
Mequon’s first postmaster, John Weston, is mentioned many times in the essential local history book, the History of Washington and Ozaukee Counties, Wisconsin … Illustrated. Western Historical Publishing Co., Chicago, 1881. Using the “Find” function on my PDF copy of the book,1 I found results for “John Weston” on pages 475, 476, 523, 524 and 545.
There is also an entry for “T. Weston” among the names on the “First Poll-List of Washington County” on page 316. I am confident that this is a typographical error and that “T. Weston” is actually John Weston.
The same source also records, among the early area settlers, one “John Western,” on pages 316, 477 and 478. Is this the same man as John Weston? I have carefully compared a number of sources, including the early minutes of the county road supervisors and deeds in the Washington/Ozaukee county deed books, and I am convinced that during the early years of settlement in the Mequon-Milwaukee area, “John Weston” and “John Western” are the same person, namely John Weston, born in New York about 1800, and married to Deborah Milliner in Milwaukee County in April, 1838. I’ll have examples from the documents that explain my reasoning in a future post.
Fun fact: Mary (Turck) Clark’s father, (Baptist) “Elder” Peter Turck, was the officiant at the Weston-Milliner wedding in 1838. It was the fortieth marriage recorded in the first volume of marriage records for Milwaukee county (and its still-attached for judicial purposes neighbor counties, including old Washington/Ozaukee county).2
With the Weston & Western mystery solved—for the moment—let’s see what other bits of error and confusion we can clear up…
I’m in the middle of several larger CHH research projects and I find myself swamped with information on early Mequon area pioneers. So rather than wait until I’ve got it all sorted out and then organize it into a big essay or two (or more!), I’ll be putting up some of these new bits and pieces on the blog as I find them.
Today’s subjects are the families of Jonathan Loomis (1776-1849) and his eldest child, Issac Chester Loomis (1802-1882), two of old Washington/Ozaukee county’s first white settler families. I’ve mentioned some of these folks in previous CHH posts. And while the Loomis name does appear in some of the early county histories and land records, so far I’d not been able to learn much about the family or how they came to the Wisconsin Territory in the 1830s. In fact, given that the mid-1800s penmanship on some of the source documents was often florid to the point of being unreadable, I was sometimes unsure whether documents discussing or signed by “J. Loomis” versus “I. Loomis” represented the same man, or two individuals. Today’s source goes a long way toward solving these questions.1
Descendants of Joseph Loomis in America
Loomis, Elias, and Charles Arthur Hoppin. Descendants of Joseph Loomis in America, and his antecedents in the old world. edited by Loomis, Elisha S [Berea? O, 1909], Library of Congress.
As luck would have it, I just ran across a useful digitized book in the collection of the Library of Congress, titled Descendants of Joseph Loomis in America, and his antecedents in the old world. I’m not an expert in Loomis genealogy, and thus not entirely sure how accurate this book is, but what I have read here mostly checks out when compared to what I have found elsewhere. With that said, below are the key bits of the book that are related to very early Washington/Ozaukee county history and, in particular, Isaac Chester Loomis and his family. What follows is taken verbatim from pages 193 and 390-391, though I’ve taken the liberty of expanding many of the abbreviations and adding a few paragraph breaks for ease of reading. I’ve also added a few footnotes to explain some possibly obscure references.
Let’s begin with the patriarch of the family, Jonathan Loomis…
I’m working on a subject suggested by my friends Sam Cutler and Bob Blazich from the Mequon-Thiensville Historical Society. Among other projects over the last few decades, they and their colleagues at the MTHS have restored what is believed to be Ozaukee county’s oldest building on its original foundation, the historic Isham Day house, and developed its interior into the Mequon River Postal Museum. Now my friends at the MTHS want to know more about the life of Mequon River Post Office’s original postmaster, one of Mequon’s very first pioneer settlers, John Weston.
Isham Day house, exterior, west front. Photo credit: Anna Perkins, 2021
So for the last several weeks I’ve been doing a great deal of behind-the-scenes reading and re-reading of primary and secondary sources, as well as a lot of searching for additional relevant documents, including early Milwaukee and Washington/Ozaukee county deeds and other land records. In the process, I’m learning a lot about John Weston, Isham Day, Henry Thien, and some of our other first white settlers. But I’m not quite ready to write a John Weston profile, and I still need to clear up some mysteries about Isham Day’s land and house, too.
First Postmaster(s)
New post office…at Mequan River…John Weston appointed postmaster, Milwaukee Advertiser, Oct. 10, 1840, page 2
Let’s get our bearings by making an accurate list of the county’s first postmasters and their terms of office. Our source is from the National Archives in Washington, DC, the Record of Appointment of Postmasters, 1832-Sept. 30, 1971; Records of the Post Office Department; Record Group Number: 28; Series: M841; Roll Number: 144. County: Polk – Wood, Vol. 12B, circa 1832-1844, pages 794-795, currently available via Ancestry.com as U.S., Appointments of U. S. Postmasters, 1832-1971 [database on-line], 2010, image 428 of 583 (accessed 18 Jan 2024). Here’s the microfilmed image of the two-page ledger recording Washington county’s first post offices and postmasters, slightly retouched to make for easier reading:
Click the image for a higher-resolution view, and then read on for more details about old Washington/Ozaukee county’s first two post offices and their original postmasters.
1848 was a big year for Jonathan and Mary (Turck) Clark. Their family now included four children: Caroline (b. 1840), Henry (b. 1843), Libbie (b. 1845) and infant daughter Persie (b. 1847). And 1848 was the date that Jonathan M. Clark inscribed—just below his own name—on the Clark House “cornerstone” that still decorates the lintel above the Clark House front (south) door.
Photo credit: Reed Perkins, 2015
1848 was a landmark year in many respects. Gold was discovered in California, the War with Mexico ended with the Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo and, most importantly for our Mequon pioneers, the Wisconsin Territory adopted a state constitution and was admitted by act of Congress as the 30th state in the Union.
Of course, on January 1, 1848, those events—and many others—still lay in the future, in the New Year. We’ve blogged about some of those events here at Clark House Historian, and we’ll have more to say about other 1848 events in the future. But did you ever wonder how our Mequon settlers observed the change from one year to the next during the 1840s and 1850s?
It’s Thanksgiving tomorrow, and I’m taking a few days off to spend time with family. But in the spirit of the holiday, I thought I’d reprint a lightly revised version of our now-annual Thanksgiving post, to share with you a few vintage recipes and a nice Currier & Ives lithograph from the period.1
Thanksgiving, 1867
Durrie, George H. and John Schutler, Home to Thanksgiving, ca. 1867, New York, Currier & Ives. National Gallery of Art, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon. Public Domain. Click to to open larger image in a new window.
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 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.
…against a swirling torrent of potentially Clark-related Lower Canada land grant documents. Progress is slower than expected. I’ll be back soon (I hope!) with some interesting results. Wish me luck.
And on a completely different subject, I wish a hearty Shana tova! to all my readers celebrating the start of Rosh Hashanah tonight.
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).
Clark House Historian 