1855–1894 — Born 19 June 1855; died 19 July 1894 (monument inscription; Lowell Sun of that afternoon).
Also recorded as: Clara B. Lilley; Clara Augusta Bonney; Mrs. Charles S. Lilley.
The Bonneys’ only child, married in the drawing room in 1891; her funeral left from the house in 1894.[sources]
Clara was 32 when the family moved to Fairmount Street and nearly 36 when she married Charles Lilley, a lawyer three and a half years her senior who had trained in her father’s office. Their daughter was born in April 1894. Three months later Clara died "after a long and painful illness borne with great fortitude".
The Sun’s notice is unusually personal: she "kept abreast of the best English and French literature of the day", was "an artist of no little ability", and was "sympathetic and generous to a rare degree … there are recipients of her charity of which the world knew little". The funeral was held from her father’s house.
In 1899 her husband commissioned a memorial for the family lot from the sculptor Frank Edwin Elwell — a bronze figure he called "New Life". A century later it acquired a nickname and a legend. Neither has anything to do with the woman the Sun described. See The Bonney Witch.
The Bonneys’ only child marries the lawyer Charles Sumner Lilley, who had trained in her father’s office. Lilley’s 1921 obituary gives the date as 14 April 1891; a library account, citing the Boston Globe, places the ceremony in the drawing room on Fairmount Street.[sources]
DocumentedClara (Bonney) LilleyCharles Sumner Lilley
What is uncertain: Three dates are in print — 4, 14 and 15 April 1891; the 1891 newspapers are not online.
Three months after the birth of her daughter, Clara dies at her home on Sherman Street "after a long and painful illness". The funeral is held from her father’s house on Fairmount Street. The Sun called her "sympathetic and generous to a rare degree".[source]
DocumentedClara (Bonney) LilleyClara Bonney (Lilley) Dunbar
What is uncertain: The cause of death given in modern accounts (pyaemia, a form of sepsis) has not yet been checked against the certificate.
A bronze figure by Frank Edwin Elwell, "New Life", in a granite surround by the architects Brite & Bacon, is set up over the family lot at Lowell Cemetery. Lorado Taft’s 1903 history of American sculpture lists it as "property of Hon. Charles Sumner Lilley, called the Bonney Memorial, 1899"; the architectural press published it in January 1901.[sources]