2010s

Clark House Season’s Greetings, 2020

/ Genealogist & Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

Before we come to the end of 2020, I’d like to share a little seasonal cheer with this pictorial look back at previous holidays at the Jonathan Clark House Museum. Many thanks to Nina Look, the JCH board, the community, and all the Clark House volunteers and young historians who give so much of their time and resources to keep the house alive.

If you’d like to support the Clark House and its mission to collect, preserve and share the history of the house and the early settlers of Mequon and Thiensville, please click here to make a donation. Thanks for reading, thank you for your support, and best wishes for a Happy and Healthy New Year!

Original photo pages by Nina Look. Click each page to open larger image in a new window:

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Happy Birthday, part 2: Cake!

/ Genealogist & Historian Reed Perkins. / 2 Comments

It was Jonathan M. Clark’s birthday!

Note: this post has been updated twice on November 30, 2020, see below.

This past Saturday was the 208th anniversary of the birth of Jonathan M. Clark. If you missed our special birthday post, click here and catch up on all the new and updated information about Jonathan that we’ve discovered and published here at Clark House Historian since 2016.

One of the highlights of Saturday’s post was this photo of Jonathan’s excellent 200th Birthday cake from 2012, courtesy of Anne Bridges:

Click to open larger image in new window. Photo credit Nina Look.

No doubt about it, that is one fine birthday cake. (Thanks, Anne!) But what if you wanted to bake a cake that Jonathan or Mary Clark, or one of their early Mequon neighbors, might recognize? That calls for another look into the first cook book written and published by an American:

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View from the window…

/ Genealogist & Historian Reed Perkins.

There’s a lot going on behind the scenes at Clark House Historian these days. I’ve got a half-dozen blog posts in various stages of completion, plus ongoing research and information-checking projects with Nina Look, Liz Hickman, and others. And, I’ve just heard from a third-great-granddaughter of two of the original Mequon settler families! How cool is that? More on those folks in an upcoming post—or two!

So let’s take a break, and enjoy a relaxing summer view from the Clark House. In this instance, a lovely July, 2015, view from the Clark’s front parlour, looking to the southwest toward present-day Bonniwell Road. According to the 1872 “Shoolmap” of Mequon, neighbors John Kurz and J. H. Townsend lived just across the street. A bit farther west down the road were—still—the farms of old friends and original Mequon settlers William Bonniwell and Jesse Hubbard.

Photo by Anna Perkins, used by permission. Click to open larger image in new window.