Nancy Eleanor Blankenship and John Allen Neaves

Submitted & © by: William J. Bonner

"Ella" was my father's aunt, who was the primary female caregiver for him after his own mother, Laura Allen Blankenship Bonner died in 1917.

I recall her from the late 1940's, when I would accompany my father to visit his aunt and step-mother, Eleanor.

She remarried in early 1940 to Lew Bonner, who had been a widower since 1917, but he died in December, 1940, in Austin, Texas, as she, Lew, and Joseph Bonner were heading to the Rio Grande Valley for a vacation.

She returned to her home, about three miles west of Tryon, where she lived alone until her death. She is buried alongside her first husband.

There is a possibility that there was an infant male child, surname Bonner, interred in 1903, since Laura wrote on the reverse of her marriage certificate that an unnamed male child was born March 1, died March 6, 1903, in Tryon.

My guess is that she traveled by wagon from Kingfisher to stay with her sister, Nancy Eleanor Neaves, during the latter part of her pregnancy.