Project Scroll Research Note 2026-37: Two Quaker records of the Bonines of Penn Township, Michigan: Robert Lindsey's visit of January 1850, and James E. Bonine's death in February 1897

The Bonine House at Vandalia, Michigan, built for James E. Bonine, is known chiefly from the county histories and modern Underground Railroad accounts, which give no date for his death and no early visitor's description of the family. Two Quaker sources supply both. The English minister Robert Lindsey, crossing Michigan in deep snow, wrote on 2 January 1850 that "it was eight o'clock in the evening when we arrived at our friend Isaac Bonine's, of Prairie Grove," and described Young's Prairie, on which Isaac Bonine was located, as "only from two to three miles across," with "a rich black earth of a good depth." And the Quaker weekly The American Friend printed James E. Bonine's obituary: he "Died at his home in Niles, Michigan, Second month 18th, 1897 … in the eighty-first year of his age," after a last illness "of four months' duration," having built "principally one house for worship" and helped in the erection of three others. A 1906 Berrien County history and a syndicated newspaper piece of 1908 give his death as 1898. Project Scroll Research Note 2026-37, version 1. The note sets out the record quoted, where it is held, what it changes, its limits, and what was searched before calling it new. Web version: projectscroll.com/discoveries/notes/2026-37/.