Just The Facts

Nothing but  the Facts..  ;)

Boniface Newsletter, July 28, 2002
   Itıs been a year since we last met here on the shores of Pine Lake
for a Boniface Reunion.  We sit in  the shade of the  same trees that
shaded passengers as they waited for their turn to ride in the excursion
boat captained by Traiton Boniface.  As we entered the resort we drove
past the house where Sarah Boniface and her husband John Thomas Shelp
used to sit and welcome visitors.  The big hotel on  the hill is only a
memory for some of us, a story for others.  Itıs part of our story, the
story of the people who travelled across an ocean and then a wilderness,
worked and planned, played and  prayed so that we could stand here today.
We owe them our heartfelt thanks.  Last year  this paper offered lots of
questions.  This year we have been blessed with answers to some of last
yearıs unsolved mysteries.

The lost have been found.  Or rather, they re-established contact.
   Frank Raymond had received a letter back in the early 70ıs from a man
out East looking for a Frank Boniface in Barry County.  That was just
after Uncle ³Raymond² had moved into Hastings on Green St., and started
going by his first name, ³Frank².  As a result, the Barry County courthouse
sent the letter on to him.  It was from a person in New York, looking for
relatives.  They established that they were related, and then the letters
stopped.  Uncle Raymond figured the old man must have died.
   Last August, a Sylvia Delaney found the Boniface Internet Group website,
and signed the guest book.  When I saw her entry, I danced with glee.
(Really!  And shouted a bit, too.)  Here was our lost generation, in
Buffalo, New York!  Guess you know it didnıt take long for me to e-mail her.
Her response was full of dates and names, and other wonderful information.
Our great-great or greater grandfather Francis (born 1793) is found!  With 
him, his wife Lucy, 2 sons, George and Caleb, and grandson Moses.  Daughter
Charlotte is still on the missing list.  Her son Moses is with grandpa on
the farm up past the age of 20.  Then we havenıt found him in the censuses,
either.  Donıt worry, weıre still looking.  Jo Ann Brohl did her usual
excellent job of sleuthing in the LDS library in Salt Lake City, and found
a will for George Boniface, and probate for Caleb.  Seeing as they both 
died before their sons reached adulthood, a lot of the information was not
passed on.  Thus, we must dig up old information from records.
   Sylvia Delaney is a descendant of Caleb.  He was her great grandfather.
Caleb married Catherine McMahon, and had a daughter Emma and a son Francis
Caleb (info from the 1870 census).  Emma may have died, because she wasnıt
listed as an heir in the probate papers for Caleb, who died on 3 Mar, 1886.
His son, Francis Caleb, was only 18, and wasnıt yet interested too much in
family history.  Thus, not much got passed down to Sylviaıs generation.
They are digging for it, just like we are.  Calebıs son, Francis Caleb, had
three sons, Harold Caleb, Ralph Murdoch, and Frank Wesley. Frank Wesley
Boniface is the person who wrote to Barry County, and eventually
corresponded with our Uncle, Frank Raymond Boniface.  Frank Wesley is also
Sylviaıs father.  He had 3 children, Sylvia, Frank Wesley Jr., and Barbara.
His brother, Ralph Murdoch, had no children, but the other brother,
Harold Caleb, had 2 sons, Craig and Harold Frank.  (As you can see, the
names Francis/Frank, Caleb, and Harold were popular in that family.) They
all had children so the Boniface family is living on in and around Buffalo,
New York.
   George Boniface, the other son of Francis (1793) and Lucy, was listed as
³cripple² in the English census.  In the 1870 census of New York, he is
living in West Seneca, near Buffalo, age 35, a teamster, with a wife Mary
J., age 20.  In the 1880 census he is living with his father on the farm
in Hamburg, and is listed as married, but no wife is enumerated.  When he
dies in November, 1882, his wife ³Lizzie² is listed as his executrix.
When the will is executed, his infant son, George Jr. is listed as heir.
In the 1900 census of Buffalo, George Jr. is listed as age 17, born Dec
1882, and living with his mother, Elizabeth Timms, and 10 year old sister,
Christina Timms.   As he was born after his father died,  and his  mother
remarried, he did not probably grow up knowing much of the Boniface family
story.  His Grand-father Francis died in 1881, his Grandmother Lucy in
1880, his father in 1882, and his Uncle in 1886.  His cousin Moses is no
longer listed in the area. That would have left George Jr.  and his older
cousin Frank Caleb as the only Bonifaces  of our line in New York at the
time.   Iım guessing thatıs when communication between our two branches
of the family slowed and finally stopped.

Contact is not a new thing.
   Communication must have flowed between Barry Co. Michigan and Erie Co.
New York in the early years.  Alvin Warren has a photo passed down by his
aunt of a girl (Emma?) from Buffalo, with the inscription ³across the road
from the house².  He brought it to the reunion last year.  It also seems
that the Bonifaces even corresponded across the sea.  In a box from my
grandparents house I found an old album with photos taken in Hailsham,
England! In an effort to identify them, I put them on the BIG website as
mystery pictures, and one person identified a picture of a young man as
her ancestor Ephriam Honeysett, who married a daughter of Thomas Boniface,
the brother/son who stayed back in England!  Another photo, when compared
to a golden anniversary photo of Thomas and his wife Harriet, seems to be
that couple in their middle years.  So the first several generations of
the Boniface family tried to stay connected across both the Great Lakes
and the Atlantic Ocean.

Interesting Namesakes
   We know how William and Frank were favorable names for our family.
Caleb is also found in all three areas.  When Caleb came to the U.S.
and settled in New York, both his brother Francis in Barry Co. MI and
Thomas in Sussex, England named a son after their youngest brother. 
Both namesakes were about the same age, born 1860!
The name Traiton always struck me as an unusual name, and I found
it spelled several ways.  Come to find out, Francisı (1820) sister
Lucy had married a Trayton Honeysett in England, who was born the
same year as Francis.  Would they have been friends?  After Francis
came to the U.S., his sister Lucy and 6 of her 8  children died, 5 of
them the same year she did, 1862.  Diptheria struck the family, and one
of the children to die was the oldest son, Trayton Honeysett, born 1844. 
It was the year after his death, in 1863, that our Francis and Sarah named
their youngest son Traiton. 

Names from Sussex to Barry County
   Looking back in our family tree, some of the names sound familiar,
if not downright neighborly.  Boniface, Dann, Honeysett, Waters, Ford,
...Some of the names are found almost exclusively in Sussex, which means
that a lot of Sussex people settled in this neck of the woods.  Why else
would our county seat be named Hastings?  Look on an England Map.
Hastings is in that part of Sussex right near Hailsham, Pevensey, etc.,
our old stomping grounds.

The old scandal, lost riches, story
   When talking to the older generation, vague allusions to money in
England that was lost to the Bonifaceıs, along with feelings of dissention,
weave their ways into the stories.  Alvin Warren tells of his Dad and Fred
³Buck² Boniface getting together and telling stories over a beer, and
finally deciding to go over to England to find that ³lost dowry².
But Sadie, his aunt, and the oldest child of David, told them sternly,
³Stay out of England.  Leave that can of worms alone!²  What was behind
this?  We may never know.  
   However, we do have one ³almost² tie to riches.  Our great-great or
greater grandfather Francis (1793) married Lucy Beeching.  The marriage 
certificate (courtesy of Barbara Osborne) says that Francis Bonnyface
married Lucy Beeching on March 27, 1820, in Ashburnham.     In the same
parish, Lucy was baptized as an infant on April 1, 1798.  The inscription 
reads ³Lucy, D. of Ann Beechen, widow, base born.²  However, Lucy must
have been raised a Tichbon, and felt she was a Tichbon.  Pages of the
Family Bible in possession of the family in New York list her as Lucy
³Tichbon² born on March 17, 1798 the ³daughter of Thomas Tichbon and Ann
his wife about half past 8 oıclock at night².  Barbara Osborne sent us the
marriage certificate of Thomas Tichbon and Ann Beeching, married 9 May
1802, four years after Lucyıs birth.  Was Lucy the daughter of Thomas,
or did he adopt her?  The bible  argues that she was his daughter.  
   Thomas Tichbon (1756) looks to be the son of John Tichborn (1706),
 who was the son of John Tichborn (1675), the younger son of White Tichborne
(ca 1628) of Tichborne, Southhampton.  Whiteıs older son, James, inherited
the title ³Sir² and passed it down to his son.  Thomas Tichbon, Lucyıs
Stepfather/father, descended from the   poorer son.  Was there money in
the family?  Maybe so.  Enough? Probably not.  Barbara Osborne, a descendant
of Thomas Boniface, son of Francis (1793) says that her grandfather
always said that the Tichbons had cheated the Bonifaces out of a goodly
amount of money, maybe gambled it away.  She has so far been unable to
find record of any business dealings between the Tichbons and the Bonifaces.

Other far flung cousins check in
   This year we also heard from descendants of William Dann, the brother
of Sarah Ann Dann Boniface, wife of Francis (1820).  Most of her siblings
came to the U.S., and some of them (Sarahıs Dad, David, and his son David)
settled on Marsh Road, that big curve out of Plainwell now known as ³Dead
Manıs Bend/Curve² but known by older folks as ³Dannıs Corners² .
William Dann, in England, had quite a few children, but the Dann name is
now disappearing.  Seems they tended to have girl children.

First Homes of the Bonifaces in Barry County
   Francis and Sarah settled on Marsh road, north of Graham road. 
They first lived in a log cabin, then later built a house beside it. 
Some of their children continued to live as adults in the log cabin.
The 1880 census shows David living there, with his wife, Fanny
(Winchester), and their children.   Barbara Pallett remembers visiting
them when she was a young child of 3 or 4.  Says she was astounded to
find the floor to be of DIRT!  Says it was hard packed, and not dusty,
but it was definitely dirt.  Alvin seems to remember his aunt Sadie
mentioning that it was dirt, but that they may have had planks under
the beds.
   Caleb and Traiton may have lived in the log cabin for a time, but
Caleb later inherited the larger,  wood frame house built by his father.
Lucy and Caroline and Traiton are living there with him in the 1880
census, and probably lived there most of their lives.  Caroline was
single.  Lucyıs husband, A.L.Cross, died in the Civil War, leaving her
with an infant daughter, Clara.  Caleb and Traiton never  married. 
The  log cabin is now gone, but the frame house still remains.  
   William bought a farm on Pine Lake Road, next to the big orchard
that many of us remember as ³Dunlopıs Orchard.²  William and his boys
farmed.  His second son, Fred, never left the property, though he did 
live for a time in a small house down the road.  Bill Boniface, his son,
lives in the big house now.
   Sarah Boniface married J.T. Shelp, and lived on Pine Lake Road where
Barb and Marsh Pallett  now live.  They gave the name to ³Shelp Resort²
and built it into a thriving business.
   Francis Boniface married Martha Winchester, Fannyıs sister,  and
bought a farm on Norris Road.  They adopted a daughter, Gladys Counterman.

In case you wish to visit their resting places
Oak Hill Cemetary, Orangeville
   Parents
       Sarah Ann Boniface
       Francis Boniface   Died Apr 21, 1891, age 71 years
   Children
       Caroline Boniface
       Lucy Cross
       Caleb Boniface       1860 -1934
       Traiton Boniface     1863 - 1934
       David Boniface       1857 - 1931
       Fanny Boniface (wife)1891 - 1871
Hillside Cemetary, Plainwell   M-89
       William Boniface
           Sarah E. Boniface (wife)
       Frank Boniface
           Martha Boniface (wife)
       Sarah Shelp
           J.T. Shelp (husband)
The Continuing Saga
   Everyday, yesterday becomes part of history.  Iım trying to collect
as much history as I can, and share it with you so that it has a chance
to be preserved for our grandchildren.  This year I started trying to
record recollections of my parents, even taking notes while we chat on
the telephone!  Your parents and grandparents are a wonderful source 
of information.  They also are interesting people, with fantastic lives.
Many families collect family fact sheets at reunions.  That would be a
great idea for saving the dates and names.  But letıs not lose the
persons.  What do you remember about your parents or grandparents?
Could you write up a resume for each of them?  Could you fill in a
medical history?  Could you describe them so that someone else can see
them and hear them?  Aunt Beatrice Gorham always said ³Write a Boniface
book!²  I would like to assemble one that our grandchildren could read
and feel like they had come to know the people they were reading about.
Iıd like to ask you, if you could, to adopt a parent or grandparent, and
try to get something about them on paper, either in their words, or yours.
Tape recorder, paper and pencil, video tape, computer, use whatever tool
works.  Timeıs a wastinı !
   You can always contact me with questions or information.

   e-mail:chelitsuji@prodigy.net

   Michele Tsuji        (616)  oops!  (269) 623-5313
   11334 Sprague Rd.
   Delton, MI 49046
   U.S.A.

Oh, check out the Boniface Internet group website if you have a computer.
They  also have a mailing list that you can join.  You can subscribe and
just listen.  Every so often something about one of our ancestors comes up.

website:http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~surnamru/steve/index.html