History / People

People of the house

Ten names so far, from a machinist with a patent to a charity with a corporate seal. Profiles are as long as the evidence and no longer: a hundred words about a poorly documented owner is worth more than a thousand invented ones.

1. Abel T. AthertonThe Lowell machinist who assembled the lot and built the stone house in 1883.
2. Otis A. MerrillThe Lowell architects of the estate’s stable (1883) — and possibly, but not demonstrably, of the house.
3. Arthur Perkins Bonney 1828–1896Owner from 1887 until his death; the man whose name the state inventory gives the house.
4. Emma Augusta (Call) Bonney 1828–1892Mistress of the house from 1887 until her death in 1892.
5. Clara (Bonney) Lilley 1855–1894The Bonneys’ only child, married in the drawing room in 1891; her funeral left from the house in 1894.
6. Charles Sumner Lilley 1851–1921Bonney’s son-in-law and successor in the house, where he lived from 1896 until his death in 1921.
7. Clara Bonney (Lilley) Dunbar born 1894Bonney’s granddaughter and heir, married at the house in 1917; the "Bonney L. Dunbar" who sold it in 1925.
8. Charles Brooks Stevens 1865–1949Owner from 1925 to 1944; a Tewksbury textile manufacturer.
9. Grace L. MurphyOwner from 1944 to 1951, with her husband Thomas J. Murphy.

Institution

1. The Battles HomeThe Lowell charity that owned and ran the house as a rest home from 1957 (or 1956) until 2004.

Not yet profiled, pending records: Georgiana Atherton; Edith Ames Stevens; Thomas J. Murphy; Alexander and Agnes Herron; Mary Battles; the staff and residents of the Battles Home; the owners of 2005–09. One authentic likeness has been found so far — a published 1900 portrait of Judge Lilley; the site does not use imagined ones.