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Funeral services for Albert Sydney Bonner, 53, former director ol the Upper Avenue National Bank of Chicago, 919 N. Michigan av., will be held Monday at Niles, Mich. it was learned here yesterday. Mr. Bonner, whose most recent position was president of the Clark Equipment Co., Buchanan Mich., died Wednesday.
Surviving are his wife, Evelyn and two children, Joyce and Albert S. Jr.⁴

The Son of the Well-Known Editorial-Writer Passes Away.
His many friends will be pained to hear of the death on Tuesday last of Arthur Francis Bonner, son of John Bonner one of the editorial-writers of The Call.
Young Mr. Bonner was only 25 years of age but had already manifested decided abilities. He had the advantage of a liberal education in New York, and afterward enjoyed the additional benefit of travel, going recently to China and taking up the study of practical engineering. Latterly he has been occupied in a wholesale business-house in this city.
He was quiet and unassuming in manner and won a great many friends, upon whom the intelligence of his sudden taking off will fall with a shock. The ultimate cause of death was Bright's disease. His loss leaves a sad blank in his parents' home, where his future was built upon with loving hope and intelligent care. The funeral will take place at 2 o'clock from the residence of his parents, 1900 Vallejo street. San Francisco Call, 6 July 1893.¹

George Sewell Bonner, forty two years old, of 71 Park Avenue, counsel for the Fidelity and Deposit Company of Maryland, died in Roosevelt Hospital yesterday morning from a broken back, sustained by falling twenty feet from a chestnut tree at his Summer residence in Ulster County eight days ago. He leaves a widow, who was Miss Agnes M. B. Foord, and two young daughters.
Mr. Bonner was shaking down chestnuts for these children at the time of the accident. He was brought to the hospital on Wednesday, and remained unconscious most of the time. He was a member of the Bar Association, and served on its Committee on Admissions. He was a brother of John Bonner and of Mrs. Albert Barnes Boardman of this city, and was one of the old Staten Island Bonner family. The New York Times, 4 October 1902.³

Memorial of George Sewell Bonner
George Sewell Bonner was born on Staten Island, New York, August 2, 1862. He studied law at the Columbia College Law School, and in or about 1884 he was admitted to practice in the State of New York. He became a member of the Association of the Bar in 1890. During his course at the law school, and afterwards, he worked in the real estate apartment of the firm of Stewart and Boardman, composed of William A. W. Stewart and Albert B. Boardman. After the dissolution of that firm, he continued for a time with Mr Stewart, and afterwards was in the office of Edward W. Sheldon. In or about the year 1899, he entered the office of Tracy, Boardman & Platt, and some months later was made the attorney in New York of the Fidelity and Deposit Company of Maryland. He died October 4, 1902, in consequence of the injuries received from a fall. His mournful and premature end, before he had obtained middle life, drew the general attention and sympathy of the members of the Bar of the city. A widow and two daughters survive him. The record of Mr Bonner's life is that of a hard-working and quietly successful lawyer, who won held the regard of all that knew him. He had not reached the maturity of his powers when he was stricken down. His steady growth in force and experience had given promise of great attainment in our common profession if life had been spared him. New York Bar Association Year Book, 1902, p. 99.

Sometime owner of The Seigniory and Domain of Mount Murray, on the St. Lawrence.⁸

GERALDINE BONNER, WRITER, DIES AT 60
She Succumbs to Arthritis After Illness of Several Years
Born in Staten Island.
NOTED FOR TALES OF WEST
Wrote Novels and Mystery Stories and Collaborated on Plays

Father a Prospector.

Geraldine Bonner, novelist, playwright, and writer of mystery stories, died on Tuesday at her home, 137 East Sixty-sixth Street. She had been ill for several years suffering from arthritis, and had been a virtual invalid, but had continued at her work as an author until a short time before her death. She was in her sixty-first year.

Known especially as the author of thrilling stories of the American West in the days of the gold rushes, Miss Bonner imbued her writings with a tangible breath of her own adventurous career. Born on Staten Island in 1870, the daughter of the late John and Mary Bonner, of old Moravian stock, she was taken West across the country by her parents when she was a girl of 10. For two years she lived in mining camps in Colorado, where her father was a prospector, and received her early education at his knee.

In 1883 the family moved on to San Francisco, where Mr. Bonner became the editor of the San Francisco Argonaut. Miss Bonner herself began writing for the paper when she was 17 and for four years served as dramatic critic and later foreign correspondent. In 1900 she published her first volume of fiction, "Hard Pan," the locale of which was the boisterous mining camps of her childhood days.

In succession she published "Tomorrow's Tangle, "The Pioneer," "The Castlecourt Diamond Case," "Rich Men's Children" and "The Emigrant Trail." For the stage Miss Bonner first collaborated with Elmer B. Harris on the play "Sham" in 1908 and "Sauce for the Goose" with Hutcheson Boyd in 1909. In 1914 she also collaborated with Mr. Boyd on the play "Lady Eileen," which won the $1,000 prize offered by Oliver Morosco for the best play written by American authors.

Other books written by Miss Bonner were "The Book of Evelyn," "The Girl at Central," "The Black Eagle Mystery," "Treasure, and Trouble Therewith," "Miss Maitland, Private Secretary," "The Leading Lady" and "Taken at the Flood". She was also a frequent contributor to magazines.

Miss Bonner was unmarried. Funeral services will be held tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock at the residence. Burial will be in the family plot in the old Moravian Cemetery on Staten Island.

New York Times, Published: June 19, 1930 Copyright © The New York Times.⁵

News comes from San Francisco that John Bonner, a newspaper writer, and a little more than a score of years ago a successful and conspicuous banker in Wall Street, died last Friday of Bright’s disease in his seventy-first year. He had been practically confined to his home in San Francisco for several months. His daughter, Miss Geraldine Bonner, a magazine writer and novelist of ability, was with him when he died.
A sensation was caused in Wall Street Dec. 31. 1877, by the announcement from the rostrum of the Stock Exchange that the brokerage firm of John Bonner & Co. had failed, and the subsequent information that there was a deficiency of $400,000, and that Bonner had absconded. On the same day the Bankers and Brokers Association, at 16 Broad Street, of which John Bonner was the President and largest stockholder, suspended. Bonner’s financial dealings had been so extensive that his collapse caused a great deal of anxiety, and eventually much loss to various persons. As the head of two important financial concerns in Wall Street, he controlled enormous sums of money, and at times was a very heavy lender. Jay Gould had had large transactions with the firm of John Bonner & Co., and was generally regarded in Wall Street as being the heaviest loser by the failure. Charles J. Osborn & Co. and William Belden & Co. were Jay Gould's brokers, and they had made large loans with John Bonner & Co. on railroad securities. Immediately after Bonner’s failure became known Osborn’s counsel secured a writ of attachment in a suit for $2,000, and property in the hands of Russell Sage and others was attached. Bonner, so far as could be discovered, left no assets behind him. He borrowed $25,000 in cash on the day before he disappeared. His wife and four children were left at his residence, on Todt Hill, S.I., where the family had lived for thirteen years. The two oldest sons were away from home, one studying in Paris and the other in the West Point Academy, to which he was appointed through the efforts of William M. Evarts and Charles Nordhof.
Mr. Bonner’s eldest daughter, Gertrude, who was then not quite twenty-one years old, married Albert B. Boardman, now of the law firm of Tracy, Boardman & Platt. On the evening following John Bonner’s failure and disappearance Mr. Boardman said of his father-in-law, in conversation with newspaper men: "For a long time past I have been aware that Mr. Bonner was very much worried about his business. He often said he wished he was out of Wall Street, and that he wished he had never gone into it. I never suspected, however, that he was in failing circumstances or that he was anything else than a rich man. When I heard last night that he was going to fail I was completely dumfounded. I am certain that if he has been guilty of anything improper or discreditable he was led into it by the general practice of brokers. In other words, he did no more than the generality of Wall Street men are accustomed to do."
John Bonner was a native of Quebec, Canada, and was born 11 June, 1828. Upon attaining his majority he went to Europe where he remained several years studying and perfecting himself in Continental languages. While sojourning in France he was an occasional contributor to the Parisian press. He returned to Canada when about twenty-five years of age and soon afterward took up his residence in New York. He engaged in literary work successfully and was appointed editor of Harpers Weekly. He continued to write for other publications, however, and found time to write a history of Greece, a history of Rome, and a child's history of the United States. In 1861 George Hudson retired from the post of financial editor of The New York Herald. and Mr. Bonner succeeded him. After four years of newspaper work he resigned the financial editorship and started the brokerage firm of John Bonner & Co. About the same time he became a member of the Stock Exchange. Success attended John Bonner’s business ventures, and within a short time he began to live the life of a man of means. He bought his place at Todt Hill, near Garretsons. S.I., which at one time was believed to be worth $50,000. He joined the Union League Club and the New York Yacht Club, and was a liberal patron of music, literature, and the arts. Socially he became popular. He married the sister of his partner, Arthur L. Sewell, whose wife was a daughter of Lester Wallack. The firm of John Bonner & Co. built up a large business and a first-class credit. Mr. Bonner obtained control of $750,000 of the stock of the old Bankers and Brokers’ Association, and made himself President. Having entire control of the business, he, it was subsequently ascertained, appropriated the stock of the association to the uses of his own business, hypothecating it, and pocketing the proceeds. When it was found on the morning of Monday, Dec. 31, 1877, that John Bonner had secretly departed for Canada, Mr. Sewell went to his counsel, Blatchford, Seward, Griswold & Da Costa, and told them that his partner had absconded with all the assets of the firm. He threw the blame upon the absent partner, and claimed to be innocent and ignorant of everything. He said that he had been made destitute, but preferred facing consequences to seeking immunity in flight. On the advice of his lawyers, he made an assignment to Burr W. Griswold. Investigation showed that Bonner had been a heavy loser in stock and gold transactions; it also disclosed that he had rehypothecated about $2,000,000 of securities pledged to him for loans. Nearly all of the stock brokerage houses in Wall Street were involved.
Mr. Bonner remained in Canada for several months. Next he was heard of in Kansas City and other places in the West, and after a while he resumed newspaper work in this country, finally settling in California. The New York Times, 7 May 1899.⁸