Rash's Surname Index
Notes for Edward Horne BONSALL
Edward Horne Bonsall, son of Isaac and Mercy (Milhous) Bonsall, born in Berks county, Pennsylvania, May 25, 1794, located in Philadelphia at an early age, and like his grandfather was an eminent conveyancer, and was interested in many business enterprises in the city and vicinity. He was one of the founders and for many years president of the Germantown and Norristown Railroad. He was for many years identified with various philanthropic enterprises and associations; a member of the Society for alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons in Philadelphia and elsewhere, and filled the position of prison agent, under the auspices of this society for many years. He was a man of scholarly attainments and literary tastes, was the author of a number of poems of considerable merit, written principally for social occasions, and of a History of the Germantown Railroad, published in the Pennsylvania Magazine of Biography and Genealogy, which he read before the Historical Society in 1874, as well as other ms. writings, a number of which are preserved in a volume in the Collections of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, at Thirteenth and Locust streets, Philadelphia. He died in Philadelphia, April 14, 1879, near the close of his eighty-fifth year. An obituary notice of him in the Evening Bulletin, of May 18, 1879, written by the late Dr. James J. Levick, gives us a pleasant picture of his serene old age; it is in part as follows:
"The late Edward H. Bonsall, who died on the 14th ultimo, aged nearly eighty-five years, was a remarkable illustration of the fact that the Winter of life, which is often regarded as necessarily a dreary season, may, notwithstanding physical infirmities, be yet a bright and happy one. For nearly twenty years a sufferer from attacks of angina pectoris, a very painful malady, he permitted it to interfere neither with his public duties, nor his social engagements. With a mind of much native force, improved by careful observation at home, and by travel abroad; with great powers of conversation, and with a kind heart, he was in his old age, a most delightful, genial companion; one whom the few left of his own years gladly welcomed to their homes, and whom the younger sought as an intelligent, loving friend and associate".
Edward H. Bonsall married (first), December 6, 1815, Lydia McIlvain, born October 4, 1795, died December 8, 1854, and (second), March 25, 1857, Mary (Underhill) Hutchin, a widow.
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