Pollard Memorial Library (Lowell), "Those buried under the ‘Witch Bonney’ monument"

Creator: Pollard Memorial Library staff
Date: 25 October 2023
Type: web
Repository: lowelllibrary.org
Access: Public. Open online

Useful biographical leads with its own citations (Coburn 1920; Massachusetts name-change list 1885; Boston Globe 15 Apr 1891). Contains some slips: "Supreme Court" for Superior Court, a "1800" senate date, "Plymouth" for Plympton.

Statements this record supports

C-010 — Arthur Perkins Bonney (born Plympton, Mass., 9 July 1828; died Lowell 25 March 1896) was a Lowell lawyer, city solicitor, state senator, bank president (First National 1864–80; Merchants' National 1880–96), counsel to the Proprietors of Locks and Canals and to manufacturing corporations; he moved to Lowell as a child and read law with Thomas Hopkinson and Seth Ames (admitted 1848).
C-011 — Bonney's wife, Emma Augusta (Call) Bonney, was born 15 August 1828 and died 14 September 1892 (monument inscription 'Emma Augusta Call … wife of Arthur Perkins Bonney'; Form B bibliography cites Lowell Daily Courier 14 Sep 1892).
C-014 — Charles Sumner Lilley (born Lowell 13 Dec 1851, eldest of three sons of Charles and Cynthia (Huntley) Lilley; public schools and private tutors; learned carpet designing at the Lowell Manufacturing Company; read law with Arthur P. Bonney; admitted Middlesex bar June 1877; Boston office with G. A. A. Pevey 1880–88; alderman 1879; state senator 1880–81 and 1886; Governor's Council 1884) was appointed to the Massachusetts Superior Court by Gov. William E. Russell on 29 November 1893 and resigned 1 January 1900. A halftone portrait (profile, bearded) appears in Memoirs of the Judiciary and the Bar of New England (1900), vol. 1, p. 121.
C-045 — Clara B. (Bonney) Lilley, only child of Arthur P. Bonney and wife of Judge Charles S. Lilley, died at one o'clock on Thursday 19 July 1894 at her home, 80 Sherman Street, Lowell, 'after a long and painful illness borne with great fortitude' (Lowell Sun, first edition, 19 July 1894). The monument inscription reads 'born June 19 1855, died July 19 1894'. Funeral from her father's house on Fairmount Street, 21 July; interment Lowell Cemetery. An infant daughter (born April 1894) survived her.
C-050 — The Bonney family monument stands on Bonney Avenue in Lowell Cemetery (77 Knapp Avenue, Lowell): a bronze figure of a draped woman with arms raised within a granite architectural surround. The rear panel is inscribed with four names: Arthur Perkins Bonney (1828–1896), Emma Augusta Call (1828–1892, 'wife of Arthur Perkins Bonney'), Charles Sumner Lilley (1851–1921) and Clara Bonney (1855–1894, 'wife of Charles Sumner Lilley'). Pollard Memorial Library identifies the sculptor as Frank Edwin Elwell, the title as 'New Life' and the architect of the surround as Frank Bacon; Lowell Cemetery's own monument page calls the figure 'Victoria' and prints Clara's dates as 1845–1884.
C-051 — A local legend calls the monument 'the Witch Bonney' and holds that the bronze figure's drapery slips lower each October, that her spirit roams on Halloween, and that the nearby Ayer lion stands guard; visitors leave coins and other offerings. Modern accounts (Atlas Obscura 2009; Forgotten New England 2020; Pollard 2023) record the legend's circulation; none establishes its origin or date. The 'Salem witch' element is impossible: the family lived in the nineteenth century and the cemetery was dedicated in 1841.