Bonnell House, Bradley, NY

This is a postcard made, most likely, in the early 1900s. Bradley, NY is in Sullivan County near the Catskill mountains. In the photo are 9 women of various ages, 2 young girls and one young man (probably early teens at most).

An area Bonnell genealogist, Geoff Brown (geoff@betweenthelakes.com and www.betweenthelakes.com), says: "Kind of hard to say who the people are. I’m thinking this photo was about 1908, and that COULD make the younger blonde girl my mother [Helen C. (Bonnell) Brown]– but that end of the Bonnell family was fairly prolific and it’s hard to make that leap of faith. Further complicating matters is that like most people in that area at that time, the Bonnells took summer boarders, so there’s no assurance that anyone in the photo is a family member (and not a summer boarder). It’s interesting that there is only one male in the picture, which, I guess suggests it was taken on a summer weekday, when husbands of boarders would have likely been in NYC and local men would have been at work. Possibly the young man is a summer boarder just young enough to be left in the country for the summer."

We are fairly confident, though we have no hard proof, that the house belonged to the descendants of Daniel Reynolds Bonnell. A short history, provided by Geoff Brown follows:

Daniel Reynolds Bonnell was born in the Town of Fallsburgh on 30 Nov 1823. He married (1) Sophia Hardenburgh and (2) Sarah Ann Hotchkin. I'm a descendent of the second wife. Mary Bonnell was the daughter of D.R. and Sarah Ann Hotchkin. She married Eugene Cross. Their daughter married Edmond Brooke Brown of Washington, IN. He was the son of William Louis Brown and Flora Genevieve Seay.

Unfortunately, DR was VERY guarded about his antecedents, and we can only surmise that he was the son of William Bonnell, born 1790, a miller in Liberty.

He's an interesting story. Supposedly he attended school for one day, decided he did not like it, and did not return. Yet his first wife, Sophia, was a Hardenburgh, and according to an obit, her inherited wealth from the Hardenburgh Patent gave DR his start in life. One gets the sense of a prim and proper family, but a photo of her brother, Reuben Hardenburgh, looks like something out of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" -- definitely a not a respectable looking guy.

For DRs part, he was a very successful land and livestock trader, and evidently sold a large number of horses and mules to the Union Army during the Civil War (which isn't a strong vote of confidence in his business ethics, according to what I have read about military procurement at that time). He died by his own hand. According to my late grandmother, he was despondent about failing eyesight and that a long-time friend of his had defaulted on a note DR had co-signed for him, leaving DR responsible, and one morning cut his own throat while shaving. The story was that my grandmother was in the next room at the time.

The children of D.R. Bonnell were (with thanks to Claude Bonnell -http://bunnellbonnellburnellfamily.com/):

CHILDREN OF D.R. BONNELL & SOPHIA HARDENBURGH

CASSIUS MARCELLUS BONNELL (1846-1910)
WILLIAM HENRY BONNELL (1849-1850)
WILLIAM HENRY BONNELL (B. 1852)
HERMAN M BONNELL (1857-1883)
JAMES BONNELL (1858-1915)
NANCY M BONNELL (1859-1872)
THOMAS H BONNELL (1861-1896)
MINNIE BONNELL (B. 1861)
ELLIE HATTIE BONNELL (B. 1863)

CHILDREN OF D.R. BONNELL & SARAH ANN HOTCHKIN

MAY MARY BONNELL (1872-1956)
(CHILD) BONNELL (1872-1872)
EDDIE BONNELL (1874-1877)
CARRIE BONNELL (1874-1876)
EDITH BONNELL (1875-1877)
DANIEL REYNOLDS BONNELL (1877-1959)
RALPH BONNELL (1880-1883)
JAY W BONNELL (1882-1969)
GROVER CLEVELAND BONNELL (1884-1959)

If you have information about, or photos of, this house and would like to share them please contact Charlie.

Updated November 2004