No posts this past Wednesday or Friday. I’ve been enjoying some fun time with my family.
Family Time
1850s
Monday: Map Day! – The railroad next door, c. 1857
UPDATED, April 26, 2021, to incorporate some interesting observations and corrections from reader Sam Cutler. (See the comments, below.)
I’ve had a busy weekend, and not much time to write. But I found an interesting, Clark- and Mequon-related map you may not have seen before.
The farm garden
It’s early April, and the growing season is not far off. For a farmer like Jonathan M. Clark, it’s a little early yet for plowing and sowing, but not too early to make plans and sharpen the tools. For a farmer’s wife, like Mary (Turck) Clark, it’s not too soon to think about the farm garden, its crops and layout.
I don’t know if Mary and Jonathan were regular readers of the popular and affordable farmers’ almanacs of their era; I wouldn’t be surprised if they were. There were many to chose from. Perhaps they had a copy of something like:
The Cultivator […], New Series, Vol. VII, Albany, 1850, title page. Click to open larger image in new window.
Continue readingIn the workshop…
I’m still trying to hammer out a few new posts. Nothing’s ready today. Meanwhile…
Portrait of a Blacksmith in His Workshop, ca. 1855. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2008680496/. Public domain. Click to open larger image in new window.
Another great image from the Daguerreotype collection at the Library of Congress, still in its handsome original case.
Every town in nineteenth-century America would have at least one blacksmith, ready to make or repair pretty much anything made of metal needed for farm, home, or workshop. Most blacksmiths made tools and specialty iron work, some also made wagons and carriages. Other smiths were trained as farriers, specialists the anatomy and health of the lower limbs and hooves of horses, and the making and fitting of horseshoes.
Continue readingMeet the Neighbors – Philip Moss (1809-1890)
Snow!
We got some snow in southeast Wisconsin over the weekend, and I’ve spent good parts of the past two days shoveling the driveway and sidewalk. (And then—of course—shoveling the driveway a second time after the city plow finally came through.) Of course, snow was a feature of Jonathan and Mary Clark’s time, too:
Currier & Ives. (1853) The road, winter / O. Knirsch, lith. United States, 1853. New York: Published by Currier & Ives. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/93511164/ (lightly retouched for color balance). Click to open larger image in new window.
We don’t know if the Clarks owned a sleigh while they lived in Mequon. I suspect they probably did, though their sleigh—and their clothing—may not have been quite as posh as those in this Currier & Ives lithograph from 1853.
Continue readingMary Turck Clark—updated
The original version of this post was the second-ever post on Clark House Historian. It represented what we knew at the time about Mary Turck, the daughter of Peter Turck and Rachael Gay, wife of Jonathan M. Clark, and mother of the eight Clark family children. The original April, 2016, post was pretty accurate, but we have learned a lot more about Mary and her Turck and Clark families in the meantime. So here is a revised version of that post with errors corrected and ambiguities clarified—where possible.
Please note that there are many more facts about Mary and her Clark and Turck families that I’ve written about in the past almost-5 years that are not linked to in this post. If you are looking for more information about Mary, I highly recommend using the blog’s SEARCH function and our new INDEX. And if you still can’t find the info you want, please ask me! Just use the Leave a Reply box, below, or the CONTACT link, above.
Mary Turck Clark: Mequon Pioneer
Mary Turck Clark. Photograph courtesy Liz Hickman. Click to open larger image in new window.
Continue readingWhen was Mary Turck born?
Just when you think you know the answer…
A few days ago, Clark House museum director Nina Look asked me a simple question: when, exactly, was Mary Turck Clark born? So I looked in my database and I came up with…two answers: Mary Turck Clark was born on either May 4th, 1820 or May 3, 1821. So I reviewed my dates and sources, and today’s post is about what I (re-)discovered, and what I still have to investigate.
Haven’t we been over this before?
Why, yes, we have. Here are links to earlier posts on essential sources of Mary Turck Clark birth date and birth year information, starting with my second Clark House Historian post, this now-outdated post about Mary from 2016. Other, more recent, posts have gone into detail examining Mary, her family, and their likely birth dates as found on the U.S. federal decennial censuses:
- 1840 census: Jonathan and Mary Clark on the 1840 census
- 1850 census: The Clark Family in 1850, part 2
- 1860 census: The Clark Family in 1860
I’ve not yet blogged about Mary’s 1870 or 1880 federal censuses—both enumerated in Milwaukee—but I’ve seen them and used them in my research. More on these in a moment.
Continue readingHappy 208th Birthday, Jonathan!
November 28, 2020, is the 208th anniversary of the birth of Jonathan M. Clark. To celebrate, I’m reposting a revised, expanded and annotated version of one of my first Clark House Historian posts. Since this was first published, on April 20, 2016, we have learned much more about the lives of Jonathan Clark, Mary Turck Clark, their family and their neighbors. Please check out the footnotes and click on the links for some of this newer, more accurate, information.
Happy Birthday, Jonathan! (and thanks to Nina Look for the timely reminder).
JMC: Man of Mystery
Jonathan M. Clark. Photograph courtesy Liz Hickman.
There he is. Jonathan M. Clark, builder and first owner of the handsome stone home that is now the Jonathan Clark House Museum in Mequon, Wisconsin. He was probably born in Vermont—or Lower Canada—probably on November 28, 1812, and he died on September 20, 1857. Before coming to Mequon, he served in the United States Army at Fort Howard from 1833 to 1836. He married Mary Turck, eldest child of Mequon pioneer Peter Turck, on March 15, 1840. They had a large family. We even have a photograph of JMC as an adult (above). In some ways, we know quite a bit about Jonathan M. Clark.
Continue readingPresidential Elections — the early years…
Well, the big day is just a week away. Here at Clark House Historian I try and remain officially non-partisan. But as a researcher and writer, and as an American with long, deep, roots in this country, I have a passionate interest in our nation and its history, and a life-long desire to see us live up to our highest ideals and aspirations. (Of course, human nature being what it is, we have not always lived up to those ideals.)
So with the election approaching, today’s post takes a look at the political leanings of early Washington County and—after its establishment in 1853—Ozaukee County, with an emphasis on presidential elections from 1848 to 1880. Our main source today is the invaluable History of Washington and Ozaukee counties, Wisconsin […], published in Chicago in 1881. Let’s begin with some of the earliest results, following statehood in early 1848:
Continue reading
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