Chapter One
The Boney branch of my family tree *
*Written by Art Sommers (ajsommers@aol.com).
Art Sommers connects to our family through John (Andrew) and Mary Boney of Kimball, SD. The following is the first section of his book, and is afairly comprehensive of his family roots to the Boney family. Please contact Art for permission to use or print his research.
Introduction: After about 10 years of off-and-on research on this branch of my family tree, I had failed to determine for sure exactly how my ancestors in this branch of the family tree spelled their last name. I have seen different spellings of Boney (Bony, Bonny, Bonney, Bone, and even Bonnie) but since “Bonney” is what was used on the marriage certificate between Herman S. Sommers and Agnes Bonney, I wanted to use the spelling “Bonney” assuming the bride would have made sure her last name was spelled correctly on that document. I had one piece of information that Agnes Bonney’s father’s name was Andrew Boney, but I was not sure because of spelling of his last name and because I couldn’t find any information on him in federal or state census reports. I also had one piece of information that Andrew Boney’s wife’s maiden name was Mary Ryan, but again I was not sure. I had looked through federal and state census reports and other sources looking for Agnes Bonney, Andrew Boney, and Mary (Ryan) Boney, but had no luck in finding these ancestors listed. One problem of course is that the federal census records for 1890 got destroyed in a fire. This created a 20 year gap between the 1880 and 1900 federal census records. Another confusing piece of information was that Agnes Bonney’s death certificate listed her birthplace as Walkon, Iowa. I was not able to find an existing Walkon, Iowa or a historical reference for a Walkon, Iowa. I did find a Waukon, Iowa which is and was the county seat for Allamakee County, Iowa. I was not successful in my decade long search for Boney ancestors. So, I was fully prepared to go ahead and finish this update to my family history and include just the minimal information I had on the Boney family. I had planned to finish up this update at the end of September 2015 and make copies for distribution among family members. Then on Wednesday the 9th of September 2015, I took a whole different approach to researching the Bonney name. This new approach resulted in my finally finding Boney ancestors and had me adding extensive data on the Boney family into this update. My new approach to researching the Boney family led me to a site on Ancestry.com that had a photograph of an Agnes Bonnie. That was a different spelling of the Boney last name and I was going to leave that site, but the photograph was the exact same one I am using in this update. It is the photo of Agnes sitting stiffly upright in chair in her home’s parlor. Because of that photo, I checked out this site more carefully and there was a contact name. I sent a message to that person hoping for a response. On September 12, I got a response and the two of us agreed that we were related and we started sharing information. That response from the contact was the start of my finally getitng detailed information on Agnes Bonney’s family. The issue of the spelling of her last name has not really been resolved though. Turns out that the spelling of the Boney name in Ireland is also very confusing.
The map above shows the counties in Ireland. The Boney and Ryan families in my family tree came from the county of Tipperary which is the southern central part of Ireland. Then within each county are numerous parishes which are associated with the organization of the Catholic Church in Ireland. There are over 20 parishes in just the northern half of the county of Tipperary and a map of those parishes follows on the next page. The entire island of Ireland is only about the size of Indiana in the United States. Yes, this is the very same Tipperary from that famous World War I song: “It’s a long way to Tipperary”.
The Boney and Ryan families related to me came from the Newport parish which is in the lower left of map above. The shaded parishes in above map are those in just the northern half of Tipperary.
JOHN ANDREW BONEY
John Andrew Boney would be my great grandfather. He married Mary Ryan in Ireland. They would have four children (all girls) in Ireland and then the six of them moved to Canada eventually ending up in Waukon, Iowa where John and Mary had many more children. One of those children was my grandmother Agnes Boney. I am thinking they first headed to Canada as it was part of England’s Empire, it might have been cheaper to book passage to Canada, and the Civil War was being fought in the U.S. at that time. Though Agnes spelled her last name as “Bonney” on her marriage certificate issued by the Catholic Church in Denver, Colorado, I will be using the “Boney” spelling as that seems to be the most common spelling for this family. Another complication is that John Andrew Boney sometimes went by John Boney and sometimes by Andrew Boney. His using different first names made my research more difficult. A grandfather of mine named John Vernon Brown sometimes went by John Brown and sometimes by Vernon Brown. Again, this use of different first names caused research difficulties with that ancestor too. John Boney married Mary Ryan and that got him related to a large group of Ryans. Many of Mary Ryan’s relatives left Ireland in early 1860s for Canada. Though the great Irish Potato Famine of 1845-1847 was the impetus for thousands of Irish to die or to emigrate, that famine was so disruptive that Irish people continued to leave Ireland by the thousands for decades after the end of the famine. John Boney and his new bride (Mary Ryan) waited to follow her relatives to Canada until after their fourth child (Margaret Boney) was born in 1863. Then the Boneys and the Ryans all left Canada, passed through Boston, and reached New Orleans just after President Lincoln had been assassinated on April 14, 1865. The Ryan and Boney family members bought passage on a paddlewheel steamboat to travel up the Mississippi to Iowa. That trip upriver against the flow of the Mississippi often took about 40 days. After the boat made landfall, the Boneys and Ryans set off for Waukon, Iowa which is about 25 miles inland from the Mississippi. John and Mary Boney would have seven children in Waukon during the more than 10 years they lived there. That is four children born in Ireland and seven children born in Iowa. My grandmother Agnes Boney was the third child born in Waukon and the seventh child overall in the Boney family. My grandmother’s first name was just another problem for me in trying to research the Boney family. She was born as Bridget Agnes Boney, but always seemed to use Agnes as her first name. After living in Waukon for more than a decade, John and Mary and their kids moved to Nevadaville, Gilpin County, Colorado. John and Mary ran a boarding house in Nevadaville. They had a daughter named Alice born in Nevadaville. Alice was John and Mary’s 12th and final child. Some of Mary’s “Ryan” family relatives also made this move to Nevadaville. Mary’s brother Bartholomew Ryan was living with John Boney and Mary in the Boney home according to the 1880 census. Nevadaville was a small mining community west of Denver. After living in Nevadaville for about six years, members of the Boney and Ryan families moved in 1886 to Kimball, Brule County, South Dakota where they farmed on land just outside of the small town. The winter of 1886-87 was one of the coldest winters in the northern plains states and 1886 had Brule County suffer from a severe drought that last for a few years. Hard times to have moved to try farming and ranching in a new location. Some of the Boney children stayed behind in Colorado or moved to other states. The males got jobs in the mining industry. For instance, John Boney (born in 1871) was a child who did not move to South Dakota. He is listed in the 1900 census as living in Butte, Montana and is identified as a miner. John Boney had first registered for obtaining U.S. citizenship back in Waukon, Iowa in December of 1867. It took until June 19, 1893 for him to become a naturalized U.S. citizen in Kimball, South Dakota. John’s wife Mary had many siblings, but the only one I will mention more in this history is Bartholomew Ryan who was called “Batt”.
ANNE BONEY
(1861 – 1904)
Anne was the second child born to John Boney and Mary Ryan. She was born in Ireland in 1861. Anne would be a witness to her sister Bridget “Agnes” Boney’s wedding in Denver in 1898 to Herman S. Sommers. Anne is identified as “Annie” in the wedding party photo. Ann herself would not get married until 1902 when she was 41 years old. She married Darius Comstock EnEarl in Colorado Springs in 1902. I am assuming she met Darius while visiting her married sister Agnes who was living in Colorado Springs with her husband Herman Sommers. Sadly, Anne would die in 1904 after being married only two years. She is buried in the Evergreen Cemetery in Colorado Springs. Anne’s mother Mary and her youngest sister Alice (Alice was the child born in Nevadaville) traveled from Kimball, South Dakota to Colorado Springs to attend funeral of Anne. Anne’s widower husband (Darius) ended up moving to Rollinsville, Gilpin County, Colorado which was not too distant from Nevadaville where his deceased wife’s family had been living prior to their move to Kimball, South Dakota in 1886. In the federal census of 1910, Darius EnEarl age 56 and his brother-in-law Andrew Boney age 43 are living in same home in Rollinsville. Darius had a least two patents granted to him. One patent was for a stamp-mill screen. That patent was granted to him on November 14, 1911 while he was living in the mining town of Rollinsville. There is a gravestone in Saint Margaret’s Cemetery in Kimball, South Dakota for a D. C. EnEarl. I am assuming that Darius’s body was buried there as that is where his wife’s family was living. A photograph of Rollinsville, Colorado taken in 1907 is seen below.
ANDREW BONEY
(b. 1865)
The Iowa state census of 1925 has Andrew Boney living with his sister Katherine’s family in Fort Dodge, Webster County, Iowa. Per the federal census of 1930, Andrew is still living with his sister Katherine’s family in Fort Dodge, Webster County, Iowa. Both the state census of 1925 and federal census of 1930 spells her name with a “K” rather than a “C”. She is married to Fred F. Weiss who was born in Germany. Andrew is living with his sister Elizabeth’s family in Fort Dodge, Webster County, Iowa according to the federal census of 1940. Elizabeth’s husband is named Joseph Carney whose occupation is barber. Fort Dodge is west of Waukon, Iowa and east of Kimball, South Dakota. I don’t know how three Boney sisters (Ellen is the third) ended up marrying men and then living in the same town of Fort Dodge. Andrew seems to have stayed a bachelor as indicated by his living with his parents, then living with his brother-in-law Darius C. EnEarl in Rollinsville, and then living with his two sisters in Fort Dodge, Iowa.
JAMES J. BONEY
(1867 - 1926)
James is one of the few children out of 12 that moved with his parents to Kimball, South Dakota. The South Dakota state census of 1915 shows him married to Lulu Jones whom he wed in 1910. James worked as a sheriff in Brule County, South Dakota and was killed in the line of duty in 1926. Deputy Boney was searching for a suspect who had robbed a couple of their money and car. Deputy Boney discovered the stolen car and started combing the area for the suspect. The suspect shot and killed Deputy James J. Boney on Monday September 6, 1926
BRIDGET AGNES BONEY
(1869 - 1936)
Agnes Boney as she is known in my family is my paternal grandmother. This whole name problem with this Boney family might be due in part to the baptism and confirmation rituals in the Catholic Church. A person going through Confirmation is supposed to choose a middle name to go along with their first and last name. The middle name can simply be the middle name they were born or baptized with or they can choose another. Some people might use their baptismal or confirmation name as the name they prefer using in things associated with the church while they use their other name with secular events. For instance, John Boney used John for his naturalization papers and for census reporting, but he used Andrew Boney when donating the stained glass window for the local church in Kimball, South Dakota.
In the introduction to this chapter, I mention taking a different approach in trying to find information on my grandmother Agnes Boney and her family. The following is the approach I took and the resulting information I found just this month (September 2015):
The wedding between Herman Sommers and Agnes Bonney took place in Catholic Church in Denver, Colorado in 1898. There were two official witnesses to the wedding. One witness was J. C. Campbell and the other was Anne Bonney. I never knew the relationship between Agnes and Anne Bonney. Were they mother and daughter, sisters, or cousins? My new approach to research was to try and use the Annie Bonney name. I found a wedding notice for a wedding between an Annie Boney age 43 and a Darius C. Enearl age 48 in Colorado Springs on January 16, 1902. The unusual last name for Darius gave me hope that my search for additional information would be easy. I found a death notice for Annie M. Enearl for April 15, 1904. That same notice provided her birth date of December 01, 1861. I then found a Darius C. Enearl in the 1910 federal census for Rollinsville, Gilpin County, Colorado. Darius at age 56 was living as a widower with his 43 year old brother-in-law named Andrew Boney who was born in Iowa. I then searched for an Andrew Boney and got a hit in the federal census of Nevadaville, Gilpin County, Colorado for the census year of 1880. This Andrew Boney was listed as 15 years old. That age of 15 in 1880 is a pretty close match to the 43 year old Andrew Boney living with his brother-in-law Darius Enearl in 1910. Rollinsville and Nevadaville were both small mining communities in the small Colorado county of Gilpin just west of Denver. The 1880 federal census for Nevadaville lists a John Boney and Mary Boney as head of household. The fact that wife’s name was Mary and that both John Boney and Mary Boney were born in Ireland was a match for what limited data I had on Agnes’s parents. John and Mary had eight children listed in their household. There was neither an Agnes nor Annie Bonney. There was a daughter named Margaret at 17 years old and a daughter Bridget A. at 10 years old. Bridget A.’s age is right-on for Agnes Bonney. I was hoping the “A” in Bridget’s name stands for Agnes. The other reason I think this Boney family living in Nevadaville in 1880 was my Bonney ancestors is that the first of seven boarders also listed as living in the Boney household was a Bartholomew (Batt) Ryan aged 29 who was born in Ireland. I came to find out that Bartholomew was Mary’s brother. My next step was to go back and look for Ryan and Boney names in Waukon, Iowa data sources. I found a family genealogy posting on Ancestry.com saying that a James Ryan senior, James Ryan junior, Patrick Ryan, and John Bony all went to the county courthouse in Waukon, Iowa on December 24, 1867 to register for U.S. citizenship. John Bony went with these Ryan men because he was related by marriage. Waukon, Iowa was and is the county seat for Allamakee County, Iowa. Registering for U.S. citizenship is the first official step to being naturalized a U.S. citizen. The information provided above led me to believe that Agnes Bonney is from the John Boney family appearing in the 1880 census of Nevadaville, Colorado. The reason the spelling of the Bonney name might be so messed up is that the literacy rate for the Irish in their homeland during the 19th century was very low and then add to that the fact they were probably speaking Gaelic rather than English and there are many opportunities to get the spelling wrong overtime. The family site on Ancestry.com provided a point-of-contact. I sent that person a message telling him of my Boney family relations. In my posting, I told him I had seen his family site on Ancestry.com and was wondering if we might be related. He came back and said he thought we were related based upon what he knew and what I had sent him. He gave me a user ID and password to get into his family site much more thoroughly and that is when I found all kinds of new and detailed data on the Boney and Ryan families.
The above January 05, 1898 wedding photograph shows Agnes Bonney front center and Herman Sommers front right. The man at far left is John C. Campbell a friend and witness at the wedding. The woman standing behind Herman Sommers is Annie Bonney an older sister of Agnes.
There is a notice of newly issued marriage licenses appearing in Denver, Colorado’s “The Daily News” on Wednesday January 05, 1898. That notice has Herman S. Sommers and Agnes Bonny getting a marriage license. Here is an instance where Agnes’s last name is spelled as Bonny rather than as Bonney. The newspaper notice states that both Herman and Agnes are from Denver. I am pretty sure though that Herman was actually living in Colorado Springs in the late 1890s. I also know that the state census of South Dakota taken in 1895 had Agnes living there in Kimball, South Dakota. How did these two people; one from Colorado Springs and one from Kimball, South Dakota meet and then get married in Denver, Colorado? They both ended up living in Colorado Springs after the marriage.
In the federal census of 1900 for Colorado Springs, Herman and Agnes are listed with daughter Verna (Veronica) born in February of 1899. The more than 12 months between Herman and Agnes’s wedding and birth of Verna would indicate that Herman and Agnes consummated the wedding that night in January of 1898 – no premarital sex. I don’t know how long Herman knew Agnes before their marriage. I don’t know how they met or where they met.
The federal census of 1910 has Herman and Agnes and their four kids living in Colorado Springs. Those four kids being Verna Sommers, Herman L. Sommers, Ann Sommers, and Arthur Sommers (my father). In the Federal Census of 1920, Agnes’s parents are again listed as being from Ireland. Details on these four “Sommers” children can be found in Chapter 5.
The 1930 federal census has Agnes as the “head of household” as her husband Herman had died in 1923. This 1930 census report lists her parents as coming from the “Irish Free State”. The “Irish Free State” was created in 1922 and lasted only until 1937. It was a briefly lasting politically based description for the island of Ireland. Only Verna, Ann, and Arthur are living with their mother in Colorado Springs according to this 1930 census. Herman L. Sommers is not listed as living with his mother and siblings. This 1930 census report for Colorado Springs shows that a John C. Campbell and his family of a wife and four kids was living on the same street as Agnes and her family. I am thinking this John C. Campbell is one of the witnesses at the marriage of Herman and Agnes back in 1898 in Denver. See the wedding photograph above.
Agnes Boney died November 08, 1936 in Sacramento. According to her death certificate, she had been living at 2705 “O” Street but she died in the Eastmont Sanitarium of “carcinoma of esophagus”. The death certificate says she was born in Walloon, Iowa but there is no such place now and my research does not turn up a Walloon, Iowa in the 19th century either. I believe her birth place to be Waukon, Iowa.
The story of why Agnes died in California is that Agnes’s daughter Ann was living in Sacramento with her husband (Leo Judge) who was relatively well off as a business man there during the Great Depression. Agnes’s son Arthur (my father) might have been thinking he could get a job with his brother-in-law in Sacramento. Agnes was sick and Arthur Sommers wanted a job, so Agnes, Art, and Verna all relocated from Colorado Springs to Sacramento. My mother Vivian Brown also moved from Colorado Springs to California at this time in 1936 though I am not sure of the circumstances surrounding her move.
The photograph above of Agnes Boney was taken a few years before her death in 1936. I assume the photograph was taken in her home in Colorado Springs and not at a photo studio. This is the exact same photograph used on the family site on Ancestry.com that I saw leading me to believe that the family on that site was related to me. It was because of this photograph that I sent message to the person listed as a point-of-contact on that family web site. That person’s answer to my message opened up a whole new world of information on the Boney and Ryan families for me. Anyway, back to the photo above: people did not typically smile for photos in the past. In the earliest days of photography, the photographer had to leave the lens cover off camera for a long time to let enough light into the camera to expose the negative. People were instructed to sit still and not smile as any movement would end up blurring the image. The chairs people sat in even had head rests in which the subject could rest their head to keep it from moving. Many people also had bad teeth and they might have been unattractive in many photographs. Another reason was that photographs were generally a much rarer event than now and thus having your photo taken was viewed as a special, but serious event. It wasn’t until later that cameras had “fast” film and “fast” shutter speeds allowing photographers to take photographs of moving subjects such as people and animals and rivers and waterfalls. Now-a-days everyone is expected to smile for photographs, though there might be no reason to smile. Maybe in the future people will ask why everyone was smiling in photos taken in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Upon the death of Agnes in Sacramento, her children took Agnes’s body back to Colorado Springs in November of 1936 to bury her next to her husband Herman S. Sommers in the Evergreen Cemetery. Many other Sommers family members (from Edward Sommers’ family) are also buried in the Evergreen Cemetery. The Edward Sommers family headstones are typically large and are grouped close together on one side of the cemetery near the entrance. My grandfather and grandmother (Herman and Agnes) have a small headstone located on the opposite side of the cemetery. An image of that headstone appears below.
JOHN F. BONEY
(b. 1871)
I found a John Boney listed on the 1900 federal census for Butte, Montana. He is listed as having been born in 1871. He is a lodger in household of an Andrew Mackay and his family. Andrew was born in Ireland. John is listed as a miner in this 1900 census. Then in the 1910 federal census for Butte, John Boney is married to woman named Hattie and they are running a boarding house.
ELLEN THERESA BONEY
(b. 1877)
Ellen was last child of John Boney and Mary Ryan to be born In Waukon, Iowa before the family moved to Nevadaville, Colorado. Ellen was sometimes called “Nellie” and that is how she was listed on the federal census of 1900 for Kimball, South Dakota. She married Joseph A. Henry and they lived in Fort Dodge, Webster County, Iowa. That means Catherine Boney, Elizabeth Boney, and Ellen Boney all married and settled down with their respective husbands in Fort Dodge, Iowa. Their older brother Andrew was to live with Catherine and her family and then with Elizabeth and her family in Fort Dodge.
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