1880s

Memorial Day, 2022

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

Lest We Forget

Our annual Memorial Day post, first published in 2020. This revised edition, originaly published in 2022, was inadvertently updated for the further-revised 2023 edition, making a few minor edits and adding new information about Evander B. Bonniwell’s service. So the original 2022 post is “gone” and I’m going to leave this revised-revised version of that post here for reference, in case it is bookmarked elsewhere on the blog or in a readers’ notes.

Graves of Unknown Union Soldiers, Memphis National Cemetery, photo by Clayton B. Fraser, (Library of Congress), public domain. Memphis National Cemetery is the final resting place of Mequon’s Watson Peter Woodworth, and almost 14,000 of his Union Army comrades.

Today is the day our nation officially observes Memorial Day. For many Americans, Memorial Day represents “the first day of summer,” and is traditionally celebrated with trips to the lake, picnics, parades, and sales on cars, appliances, and other consumer goods.

But for many of us, Memorial Day remains rooted in its origins as Decoration Day. The first national observance was in 1868, when retired general John A. Logan, commander and chief of the Grand Army of the Republic—the Union veterans’ organization—issued his General Order Number 11, designating May 30 as a memorial day “for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land.”

On this Memorial Day, let’s take a moment to remember what this day truly represents.

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Sewing for the family

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins.

Updated February 22, 2022 to fix a few minor typos, and to add a link to a brief history of American samplers, with an illustrated list of 73 of the 137 American samplers in the Textile Collection of the National Museum of American History.

In addition to raising and educating her children, a 19th-century farm wife like Mary Turck Clark had many other responsibilities, including planning and tending a farm garden, preserving its produce, preparing daily meals for the family and hired hands, and keeping the farm house clean and organized. And Mary, like many women of her era, probably made some or all of her own and her family’s clothes.

The sewing arts

Like most girls of her era, Mary Turck (born in New York, 1821) probably learned the craft of needlework from her mother and, perhaps, as part of her school education. When a young girl like Mary mastered some of the many practical and decorative sewing stitches, she might demonstrate her proficiency by making a sampler.

A sampler might feature simple examples of sewn letters, numbers and perhaps a popular saying or Bible verse. But many samplers were more complex and artistic. An accomplished embroiderer might produce an elaborate sampler featuring detailed images and texts, as in this 1829 sampler from Connecticut.

Thompson, Mariette (1817-1851), [Sampler with family register], 1829. Yale Art Gallery, public domain. Click to open larger image in new window.

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2021 Blog Roundup

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 4 Comments

It’s a New Year (yikes!—we’re already three weeks into the New Year!), and I thought I’d take a break from researching and note-taking for quick look back at our 2021 year of blogging at Clark House Historian. The blog is about to celebrate its seventh anniversary (on March 29), and 2021 was our most productive year so far, sharing more posts, documents, and historic maps and images with our readers than ever before.

The author, hard at work. For full photo credits, see below. Click to open larger image in new window.

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Caroline Clark – from student to teacher

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

We’re looking into the life of Jonathan M. and Mary (Turck) Clark’s first child, Caroline Clark. If you need to catch up, you might start with some pivotal dates and events in the lives of Caroline and her Clark family in:

Then check out these previous posts in our current Caroline (Clark) Woodward series:

The biographical materials we looked at in those posts were a good introduction to Caroline’s life (through 1893), but lacked some key information about her youth, and especially her transition from a scholastic “prodigy” in rural Mequon to—supposedly—a teacher in Milwaukee’s public schools. And in order to examine her time as a Milwaukee public school student and teacher, we had to take a deep dive into the life and work of her esteemed high school principal, Caroline Clark’s mentor, John G. McKindley.

Walling, Henry Francis. Map of the county of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. New York: M.H. Tyler, 1858, Library of Congress, (inset showing Cross’ Block).

View of Cross’ Block circa 1858, home of the Milwaukee School Board until destroyed by fire on December 30, 1860.1, 2

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Caroline Clark’s mentor, John G. McKindley

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 7 Comments

In today’s post, we continue our examination of the life and work of Jonathan M. and Mary (Turck) Clark’s oldest child, Caroline Mary (Clark) Woodward (1840-1924). In our earlier post, Caroline M. (Clark) Woodward: a closer look at that 1893 biography, we came across this passage:

Caroline was the oldest daughter. She attended the district school in a log house till seventeen years of age. To that was added one year of study in German in a private school. At the age of eight years she was considered quite a prodigy in her studies. At the age of seventeen she began to teach. After two years of study in the Milwaukee high school under John G. McKidley [sic, McKindley], famed as a teacher and organizer of educational work, she taught in the public schools of that city.

Photo of Caroline M. (Clark) Woodward courtesy of Frances Willard House Museum & WCTU Archives, Evanston, Illinois. Text: Willard, Frances E., and Mary A. Livermore, editors. A woman of the century ; fourteen hundred-seventy biographical sketches […], Buffalo, 1873, page 779.

Think back…

Imagine this: You are now more than 50-years-old. You have achieved statewide and national prominence as an organizer for the largest women’s social and political organization of the 19th-century. You and your spouse manage a family farm, continue to raise your several adopted and foster children, and you have a successful business of your own, selling insurance. And when you are asked to provide the details of your life for inclusion in a major biographical dictionary of leading American women, you make sure to include, by name…one of your high school teachers?

That’s exactly what Caroline (Clark) Woodward did in 1893, when she highlighted her two years of study with John G. McKindley at the Milwaukee public high school. And that prompts a few questions: who was J. G. McKindley? why is he cited in Caroline’s 1893 biography? when would he have worked with Caroline? was he really “famed as a teacher and organizer of educational work”? and how big a deal was “high school” in Wisconsin in the 1850s and ’60s, anyway?

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Caroline M. (Clark) Woodward: a closer look at that 1893 biography

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 8 Comments

Today, as we continue to explore the life of Jonathan M. and Mary (Turck) Clark’s eldest child, Caroline Mary Clark—later usually known as Mrs. C. M. Woodward—we’ll take a fact-by-fact look at the biographical sketch of Caroline that was published in 1893, re-printed unchanged in 1897, then abridged and reprinted in 1912. For a full discussion of these three publications, see last Monday’s Caroline M. (Clark) Woodward: first steps toward a biography.

Willard, Frances E., and Mary A. Livermore. 1893. A woman of the century ; fourteen hundred-seventy biographical sketches accompanied by portraits of leading American women in all walks of life ; ed. by Frances E. Willard and Mary A. Livermore, assisted by a corps of able contributors, title page and page 779.

Today’s post will be less of a fully-formed essay, and more of a running analysis, commentary, and proof-reading of this 1893 biographical sketch. We’ll take one portion at at time, starting at the beginning. The source text will be presented as a shaded quotation, followed by my commentary and corrections in simple black text on white background, with highlighted links to additional sources and explanations and, of course, a few footnotes, too. Here we go…

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Caroline M. (Clark) Woodward: first steps toward a biography

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 3 Comments

In our most recent blog post, Another family portrait! Caroline (Clark) Woodward, c. 1890s, we located and discussed the history of a previously unknown photo of Jonathan M. and Mary (Turck) Clark’s eldest child, Caroline Mary Clark, later usually known as Mrs. C. M. Woodward:

Townsend Elite Studio, [Portrait, Caroline M. (Clark) Woodward], inscribed “Mrs. C. M. Woodward, Supt. Work among Railroad Employes, N.W.C.T.U.”, photograph, circa 1889-1900. Photo courtesy Frances Willard House Museum & WCTU Archives, Evanston, Illinois. Click to open larger image in new window.

Caroline’s life was the most public—and perhaps best documented—of all the members of Jonathan M. Clark family, and is overdue for a closer examination. So today we begin a multi-part look at Caroline’s story, starting with three biographical sketches that were published during her lifetime.

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Another family portrait! Caroline (Clark) Woodward, c. 1890s

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 7 Comments

UPDATED – October 9, 2021, with clarification that “NWCTU” means, indeed, the National (and not Nebraska) WCTU.
UPDATED – October 8, 2021, to correct typos in the date range of the photo. Correct (maximum) date range is 1889 to 1900. Also removed a few randomly duplicated words in the first paragraph.

More Big News! It was only a few weeks ago that we presented a previously unknown photo of the youngest child of Jonathan M. and Mary (Turck) Clark, Dr. Jennie Clark Morrison. Today we have another great find, a professional photo portrait of the Clark’s eldest child, Caroline Mary (Clark) Woodward (1840-1924):

Townsend Elite Studio, [Portrait, Caroline M. (Clark) Woodward], inscribed “Mrs. C. M. Woodward, Supt. Work among Railroad Employes, N.W.C.T.U.”, photograph, circa 1889-1900. Photo courtesy Frances Willard House Museum & WCTU Archives, Evanston, Illinois. Click to open larger image in new window.

Clark family descendant Liz Hickman and I have been gathering information about Caroline for many years. Spurred on by this new photo of Caroline in her prime, I think it’s finally time to assemble the sources, line up the facts, and begin to share more of what we know about Caroline’s remarkable life as a teacher, wife, mother, and social activist. There is a lot of material to work with, so today let’s stay focused and just take a closer look at this new-to-us photograph.

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A Dental Divertimento…

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

UPDATED, September 17, 2021, to add a few details about the Morrison children, Jennie’s dental practice in the 1880s and ’90s, and the date of her divorce from second husband A. G. Widger.

Due to unforeseen circumstances, I won’t be blogging much this week. (Let’s just say that the cause of my hiatus has inspired today’s post, featuring a brief introduction to the life of the Clarks’ youngest child, Dr. Jennie M. Clark, D.D.S.)

Unknown photographer, [Dentist], daguerreotype with applied color, circa 1855. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase from the Charles Isaacs Collection made possible in part by the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment. CC0. si.edu. Click to open larger image in a new window.

Clark House dentists

I’m not sure who Mequon’s first dentist was, or when he set up shop. It’s entirely likely that the Jonathan Clark family did not visit a dentist until they moved to Milwaukee (and they still may not have seen a dentist once there). But Mequon’s Jonathan Clark House plays an important part in the lives of two Mequon/Milwaukee area dentists.

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J. R. Turck – from Mequon to New Orleans

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 4 Comments

Mequon kin, down South

Previously, we turned our thoughts to the historic city of New Orleans, and the disastrous impact of then-ongoing Hurricane Ida. Once again the Crescent City was hit by a major hurricane. Ida has since moved on and lessened in intensity, but leaves in its wake significant wind and water damage; over one million Louisiana residents are currently without electricity, gasoline, and fresh water, and it looks like it will take weeks to restore services. We wish a speedy recovery for all those in the affected areas.

I have a more-than-passing interest in New Orleans because our Clark House family has ties to the city; Mary (Turck) Clark’s brother, Joseph Robert Turck (1823-1902), spent most of his adult life there.

New Orleans, Louisiana Sugar and Rice Exchange, c. 1891. Source and credits, below (note 1). Click to open larger image in new window.

Joseph R. Turck

Like his big sister Mary, Joseph R. Turck was born in Athens, Greene county, New York. He was about five years old when the family moved to Wayne county, New York, and about fourteen years old when the family migrated west to Mequon in 1837.

In February, 1845, Joseph purchased 40 acres of his father Peter Turck’s Mequon land.2 Joseph did not keep it long; he sold it back to his father in September of the same year. What happened next? We’re not sure. But by 1848 Joseph had left Wisconsin and relocated to New Orleans.

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