Question: Is It OK for Someone to Take Information from This Site and Add It to Their Ancestry Family Tree?

This blog is a great place for discussing ideas and sharing opinions. Here's our first opportunity, and we really need to hear from you about how we permit information to be copied and shared.

One of our readers was very excited by the Bible pages posted on this blog. They support her genealogy. She asked permission to upload the images to her family tree on Ancestry.com. We cannot stop anyone from doing just that, but this person should be commended for requesting approval first.

Ancestry's terms and conditions say this about the content added to family trees on its site:

The decision to upload or share User Provided Content on the Websites is your responsibility and you should only submit or share User Provided Content that belongs to you (or where you have obtained all necessary permissions or consents) and that will not violate the rights of others. Be aware that copyright and other intellectual property rights will normally belong to the creator of the material in question and you should not reproduce or submit anything without permission of the owner. By submitting User Provided Content to any of the Websites, you represent and warrant that you have the right to do so or that you have obtained any necessary third party consents (e.g., under privacy or intellectual property laws). If you submit material to any of the Websites on behalf of a group, organization or business entity, you represent and warrant that you have the right to do so and that you have obtained any consents from the group, organization or business. You agree that you will be liable to us and indemnify us for any loss or damage we suffer as a result of your breach of the foregoing warranties. Upon our request you agree to furnish Ancestry with any documentation, substantiation and releases necessary and reasonably required to verify and substantiate your compliance with this provision. 

By submitting User Provided Content on any of the Websites, you grant Ancestry and its Group Companies a perpetual, transferable, sublicenseable, worldwide, royalty-free, license to host, store, copy, publish, distribute, provide access to create derivative works of, and otherwise use User Provided Content submitted by you to the Websites, to the extent and in the form or context we deem appropriate on or through any media or medium and with any technology or devices now known or hereafter developed or discovered. You hereby release Ancestry and its Group Companies from any and all claims, liens, demands, actions or suits in connection with the User Provided Content you submit, including, without limitation, any and all liability for any use or nonuse of your User Provided Content, claims for defamation, invasion of privacy, right of publicity, emotional distress or economic loss. This license continues even if you stop using the Websites or the Services. Ancestry may scan, image and/or create an index from the User Provided Content you submit. In this situation, you grant Ancestry a license to the User Provided Content as described above and Ancestry will own the digital version of documents created by Ancestry as well as any indexed information that Ancestry creates. Except for the rights granted in this Agreement, Ancestry acquires no title or ownership rights in or to any User Provided Content you submit and nothing in this Agreement conveys any ownership rights in such User Provided Content on the Websites. The licenses granted continue for the maximum time permitted by applicable law, even if you stop using the Websites or the Services. 

You acknowledge and agree that Ancestry may preserve any User Provided Content and may disclose any User Provided Content (including its origin) if Ancestry believes that it is required to do so by law or that such preservation or disclosure is reasonably necessary to: (a) comply with legal process or governmental requests; (b) enforce the Agreement; (c) respond to claims that any Content violates the rights of third parties; or (d) protect the rights, property, or safety of the Websites, the Users, or the public.

Ancestry can change their terms and conditions at any time. The ones above are labeled Revisions as of March 17, 2015.

The Bible pages are not copyrighted, but it seems posting them on Ancestry's site gives Ancestry the right to do whatever it wants with them, in perpetuity. Is that a problem or a good thing?

 Please add your thoughts by posting a comment. After you've all had a chance to express your opinions I'll revise this post.

The Hatfield Bible: Family of Aaron Bonnell and Anne Brotherton

The Hatfield Bible is commonly cited as proof for the children of Aaron Bonnell and Anne Brotherton. When Margaret Watson Cooke and Lola Bonnell were doing their research it was in the possession of Mrs. Ruth Amer, Medford, Oregon. It came to her from her mother, Susan Hatfield England, daughter of John Sherid and Joanna M. Bonnell Hatfield.

I have only seen transcriptions, though one was certified by a notary when submitted to the DAR. The copy posted here came from Claude Bonnell and is also on his database as source E867 (thanks to Charlie Bonnell for maintaining Claude's site for us.) 

The birth dates of Joanna Bonnell Hatfield’s siblings were written on a sheet of paper that was part of an old letter signed by S. Bonnell. It was tucked into the bible. 

Births etc of Aaron Bonnell & Ann Brotherton & children were written in the Bible. Dates for Aaron & Anne Brotherton Bonnell & their children are written in the Quaker way, where the months are numbered rather than using months’ names based on heathen gods. 

The transcription has been typed here on the blog so the names will come up in an internet search.

If anyone has copies of the original letter and bible pages, please let us know. We'd love to post images of them.

Recorded in the Bible
Aaron,son of Benjamin & Eleanor Bonnell, was born 3 mo 30th 1749
Anne, wife of Aaron Bonnell & daughter of Henry & Mercy Brotherton, b. 9th mo 7th, 1753

Elizabeth, daughter of Aaron & Anne Bonnell born 1st M. 21, 1773
Moses son of Aaron & Anne Bonnell, born 4th M. 3rd, 1774
Henry son of Aaron & Anne Bonnell born 7th M 29th, 1776
Mary daughter of Aaron & Anne Bonnell born 6th M 23rd, 1778
Sarah daughter of Aaron & Anne Bonnell 1st M. 31, 1780
Anne daughter of Aaron & Anne Bonnell 11th M. 22, 1781
Mercy daughter of Aaron & Anne Bonnell born 2nd M 25, 1784
Benjamin son of Aaron & Anne Bonnell born 4th M 12th, 1786
James son of Aaron & Anne Bonnell born 9th M. 13th, 1788
John son of Aaron & Anne Bonnell born 4th M 29th, 1791
Eleanor daughter of Aaron & Anne Bonnell born 4th M. 29th 1793
David son of Aaron & Anne Bonnell born 6th M. 17th 1795
William son of Aaron & Anne Bonnell born 7th M. 28th 1797

Rachel wife of Benjamin and daughter of Christian & Ann Mongsmith born 11 M. 22nd, 1803
Aaron son of Benjamin & Rachel Bonnell born 10th M. 13, 1820
Christian son of Benjamin & Rachel Bonnell born 6th M. 29, 1822
Elizabeth daughter of Benjamin & Rachel Bonnell born 9th M. 10th, 1824
Isaac son of Benjamin Bonnell born 9th M. 26th 1826

Recorded on the Sheet of Paper
Mehetable Bonnell born 16 Mar 1812
Anne Bonnell born 4 Oct 1814
Harriet Bonnell born 7 July 1816
Elizabeth Bonnell born 30 Nov 1817
Aaron Bonnell born 2 Dec 1819
Henry Bonnell born 9 July 1821 *
Simeon Bonnell born 6 Apr 1823
Joanna Bonnell born 16 May 1825
David Bonnell born 18 May 1827
John A. Bonnell born 31 Oct 1828
Eunice Bonnell born 21 Jan 1831
William S. Bonnell born 21 July 1833

* On the transcription the 9 in Henry Bonnell's birth date is circled and a handwritten note says, "7/6 in the Brotherton Gen." This probably refers to “Genealogy of Brotherton, Bonnell Families of Morris County, New Jersey and Hamilton and Claremont Counties, Ohio,” compiled by Margaret Watson Cooke in the 1960s. It reports the descendants of Aaron Bonnell and Anne Brotherton based on information provided by many correspondents, including Mrs. Lee Amer (Ruth Amer).

I inherited many of Margaret's early versions of this work and they all show Henry's birth date as 7-6-1821. Between early drafts and her final version she dropped everyone who didn't live to adulthood. I prepared a revised version that includes all these lost children, if anyone wants a copy.

Family Bibles: Moses Bonnel-Hannah Buckingham and Henry Bonnell-Amelia Mattox

This post refers to an article published in the Bunnell/Bonnell Family Newsletter Vol. 3 No. 3, July 1989. Marilyn Lynch, Sayre, OK submitted copies of the family record pages from two Bibles that had been sent to her, but were not of her own line. One Bible recorded the family of Moses Bonnell and his wife, Hannah Buckingham. The second recorded the family of their son Henry Bonnell and his wife, Ameila Mattox.

The article contained transcriptions of the pages. Family Bibles are not always accurate, especially if births, deaths and marriages weren't recorded when they occurred. They need to be supported by other information. Transcribers can misread handwriting or make typographical errors.

One date in these Bibles was wrong and another may be.

Is the William B. Buckingham's death date in the Moses Bonnell & Hannah Buckingham Bible right? The transcription and the original Bible both say 1841, but this can't be correct if his youngest child, Sarah Ellen, was born in 1846.

Albert Bonnell did not die on Oct. 28, 1937 as reported in the transcription of the Henry Bonnell & Amelia Mattox Bible:, but Oct. 28, 1936, in Sarasota County, Florida.

Here are old photostatic copies of some of the Moses Bonnell-Hannah Buckingham Bible pages.

If anyone has better copies, please let us know and we'll put up the better images.  Notes on the back of one copy say these pages came from Lola Bonnell, but they aren't the Bible pages the Cincinnati Museum Center sent when copies of Bible pages were requested.  There is a Bible in her collection there, but it was "too big to copy." The staff may have assumed the loose pages they found among Lola's papers were copies from that Bible. My guess is they weren't because they show the family of Lee Andrew Bonnell, Henry and Amelia's nephew (son of his brother Aaron).

This is another reason it would be nice to have a reader who lives near Cincinnati and is willing to spend a few hours in an archive for us.

Query: Elizabeth Bonnell Brannen's father John Bonnell of Georgia

Our first query! Can anyone help her out? If you can, click on the Comments button below this article and type in any information you have. 

I thank you so very much for doing this!  

I'm not a good researcher and haven't done too much with my Bonnell's from Columbia County, Florida.  They were John Bonnell and daughter Elizabeth that married a John Milledge Brannen.  She was my grt-grt-grandmother.  I'm going to be 80 in October.  John was a Jr.  

I'm just curious to know where the John Bonnell, Eliza's father, originated.  I know it was Georgia.  He had a son, John also.  Eliza's brother.  I know the brother's  lineage somewhat.  It's the John Sr. I was wondering about.

It's hard to bring up information after being away from it for awhile.  But I'm so glad that there's a place I can go and remember the Bonnell name.

My mother was Agnes Brannen, her father was David Ulee Brannen, his father was John Milledge Brannen Jr., and his father was John Milledge Brannen Sr. whose wife was Elizabeth Bonnell, and father was John Bonnell from Georgia.   So somewhere down the line one of my grandmother's was a Bonnell!

Thank you so much.

Papers of Lola Bonnell at the Cincinnati Museum Center

Some of you may remember Lola Bonnell, who collected much material about the Bonnell family and worked with many people to compile it. My great-aunt Margaret Watson Cooke was one of them.

Lola was daughter of William Jones Bonnell & Florence Buckingham, granddaughter of Aaron Bonnell & Margaret Dackey, great-granddaughter of Moses Bonnell & Hannah Buckingham.

Lola donated her papers to the Cincinnati Historical Society and they are now archived at the Cincinnati Museum Center. According to Christine Engels, Archives Manager, they are extensive and not all genealogical.

Ms Engels was kind enough to send me information on the collection, as follows. There is not a more detailed inventory.

Mss VF 1377 = William Bonnell’s receipts and financial information – 1 file

Mss VF 1378 – Information on the Bonnell family and their home in Indian Hill – 1 file

Mss VF 1379 – Genealogical Bonnell information – I file

Mss VF 3442 - Genealogical Bonnell information – I file

Mss VF 3443 – Information on Indian Hill – 1 file

Mss VF 3444 – Genealogical information on the Bonnell and Weller families – 1 file

Mss VF 3709 – Information on the Christian Waldschmidt house – 1 file

Mss fB716t RFM – William Bonnell volume as Treasurer in Special School District in Hamilton County and some household accounts, 1891-1903 – 1 volume, very fragile and oversized, not able to copy (Note: this William Bonnell is probably Lola's father.)

Mss qB716 – Bonnell family deeds, mortgages, letters, 1832-1962 – 1 box

Ms Engels invited me to go through the boxes myself, but as I live on the west coast this isn't feasible. She had an intern go through them and make copies of letters she found, and I did purchase copies of them. The Museum Center has given us permission to post them on this blog and I'll be doing that in not-too-distant future.

Maybe someone who lives in the Cincinnati area and part of her line can make a more detailed inventory for us.

This Bunnell-Bonnell Family Blog was created to share information on the many branches of the Bunnell/Bonnell family tree. It is the child of the Bunnell/Bonnell Newsletter, which was in continuous publication from January 1987 until November 2014–28 continuous years!

Mr. William Austin of Lacyville, PA started the Newsletter in order to share some of the material he had collected during 25 years of research and correspondence. That first issue was 8 pages long. Over the years Bill grew the Newsletter both in content and in subscribers, and he became one of the foremost experts on the Bunnell/Bonnell genealogy.

After 10 years of publishing the newsletter, Bill turned it over to Carole Bonnell and her sister-in-law Teri Bonnell. Their first publication was in January 1997. Like Bill, they published an outstanding Newsletter and provided a much needed forum for Bunnell and Bonnell researchers to share information and ask questions.

Finally, in January 2003, in answer to Carole's and Teri's calls for new editors, Charlie and Pat Bunnell decided to give it a try. Charlie had just retired and was looking for something new to "obsess" over. 

The newsletter ceased publication with the November 2014 issue because no one volunteered to take over for Charlie after he decided to take a well-deserved break.

Every issue of the newsletter is available on Charlie's website at 

http://www.bunnellfamily.com

The creators of this blog and all Bunnell/Bonnell family researchers owe enormous debts of gratitude to these editors and all who contributed to the newsletter. Thank you for all the information you preserved and shared.

The newsletter had always been an informal, information sharing publication with all of the subscribers recognizing and treating each other as family. We hope this blog will be the same.