Channel Pickering Townsley (1833-1907)

    A native son of Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania, Channel Pickering Townsley removed to Missouri at an early age, and as an adolescent sought his business and political fortunes in the county of Pettis. A one-term member of the Missouri State Senate, Townsley later became a district court judge in Missouri before removing to Barton County, Kansas, where he found further prominence as a newspaper publisher.

   Channel P. Townsley was born in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania on February 14, 1833, one of several children born to Channel Pickering and Mary Griffin Townsley.  The Townsley family left the confines of Huntingdon and resettled in Boonville, Missouri, where Channel Sr. engaged in the manufacture of carriages. The Biographical History of Barton County, Kansas (which gives a decent overview of the Townsley family) notes that Channel Sr. was bitten by the gold rush bug in the early 1850s and migrated to California. Here he became acquainted with Asian natives who were conducting trade in San Francisco. Channel Sr. is later mentioned as visiting China, where he died sometime in 1856.

  Channel P. Townsley, the subject of the profile, received his education in Boonville at the Kemper Institute, while also learning the carriage building trade at his father's shop. In the early 1850s, Townsley began pursuing a career in law and was eventually admitted to the bar in Pettis County. Soon afterward he established a law office in Georgetown, Missouri and in the late 185os became city attorney for Georgetown, serving in this capacity until 1861.

   Townsley put his law practice on hold in 1861, signing on for service in the Civil War. He joined the 40th Regiment of the Missouri State Militia. He served throughout the war, seeing action at Wilson's Creek, and eventually reached the rank of captain. Townsley was mustered out of service at the war's conclusion and returned to practicing law in Pettis County. In December 1865 Townsley married Laura Moses (1848-1915), with whom he would have ten children, including Channel P. (1867-1921), Florence Evelyn (born 1869), Laura Emma (1870-1874), Theodora Alice (died aged three months in 1872), Jessie Stuart (died aged five months in 1874), George Leopold (died aged five months in 1877), Edward Moses (died aged seven months in 1879), William Lawrence (born 1881), Charles Reuben Francis (born 1884) and Laura (born 1891). Two of Townsley's sons went on to distinction in their own right, with Channel P. becoming a noted American artist while William Lawrence became the editor of the Great Bend Tribune.

   In 1866 Channel Townsley was elected as attorney for Pettis County and in the following year won a seat in the Missouri State Senate as a Republican. His two-year stint in the senate saw Townsley serve on the committee on the penitentiary, and a roster from that legislative session (bearing his name) is shown below.

   Shortly after his Senate term concluded in 1869 Townsley was elected as a judge for Missouri's Fifth Judicial District, serving on the bench for six years. In 1875 he removed from Missouri to Barton County, Kansas, and shortly after his arrival established a law practice in the town of Great Bend. In 1876 Townsley switched his attention from public service to publishing, becoming the founder of the Inland Tribune. The Biographical History of Barton County notes that the paper "pertained to the interests of the Republican party and the farming community" and it received "a wide circulation throughout the Arkansas Valley, where its influence was widely felt." Townsley's paper underwent a name change in the early 1880s, switching to the Great Bend Tribune. One can also note that the Tribune is still in existence today, nearly 140 years after its establishment.

   The remainder of Townsley's life saw him become a figure of distinction throughout Barton County, being acknowledged as "unswerving in his fidelity to the people, honest in his beliefs and politically often took a stand foreign to the desire of party bosses, but which in the end proved him right." Townsley died in Great Bend at age 74 on August 4, 1907, "after a period of three years of suffering from a nervous breakdown." He was interred at the Great Bend Cemetery and was survived by his wife Laura, who died in 1915 at age 67. The rare portrait of Mr. Townsley shown above (and very likely the only one to be found online) was featured in the earlier mentioned Biographical History of Barton County, originally published in 1912.

Downer Tenny Bramble (1833-1888)

Portrait from Morton's Illustrated History of Nebraska, Vol. I, 1911.

    A pioneer citizen and politician in both the Nebraska and North Dakota Territories, Downer Tenny Bramble was originally born in Hartland, Vermont on February 28, 1833, the son of Charles Francis and Matilda Bramble. Downer attended school in his hometown of Hartland, Vermont, and eventually removed to Nashville, Tennessee at age 17. Shortly after he arrived in Nashville, Bramble began work in a drug store with his brothers George and Gilman, who had both migrated to Tennessee some years previously. Downer and his brothers relocated to New Orleans a short time later and there operated a general merchandise store.

  Throughout the late 1850s, Bramble continued to be on the move, settling in Iowa and finally in Nebraska in 1858. He opened a grocery store in the town of Ponca and also married his first wife here, Lucinda Brown. Their marriage lasted but a short time, with Lucinda dying of an undisclosed illness that same year. Despite the loss of his wife, Bramble ran for and was elected to the Nebraska Territorial Legislature in 1858, representing the county of Cedar. During his short tenure in the legislature, Bramble earned lasting notoriety by introducing legislation that brought about the formation of Dixon County in November 1858.

   In the following year, Bramble removed yet again, this time settling in Yankton,  Dakota Territory, and here established a general merchandise store under the title Bramble, Miner and Company, and operated this store for over 25 years. In addition to this business, Bramble received an appointment as Yankton's first postmaster and later operated a freight line that transported goods into the Montana and Idaho territories.

   While Bramble's professional and business career continued to expand, he was also an active participant in territorial political circles. He was elected to his first term in the Dakota Territorial Council in 1861 and was returned to this office in 1862 and 1873. He would also serve a one-year term in the Territorial House of Representatives in 1866, representing Yankton County. As far as political faith was concerned, the History of Dakota Territory, Volume 4 (authored by George W. Kingsbury) notes that Bramble

 "Gave unfaltering allegiance to the democratic party and always worked faithfully for the furtherance of all true democratic principles, feeling that within the party platform were found the best elements of good government."

   Several years after the death of his first wife Lucinda, Downer T. Bramble remarried to Yankton resident Virginia Van Der Hule in May 1865. Two sons were born to this couple, Harry Jesse (born 1867) and Frank Litchfield (1871-1966). Virginia Bramble is recorded as surviving her husband by nearly twenty years, dying in 1906 at age 67.

   Bramble continued in public service during his later years, receiving an appointment as Register of the Land Office in Watertown, South Dakota under President Cleveland. The earlier mentioned History of Dakota Territory also notes that Bramble was an active Mason as well as a member of the Yankton Episcopal Church. He died in Watertown on October 9, 1888, and was laid to rest in the Yankton City Cemetery in Yankton, South Dakota.

McKaskia Stearns Bonnifield (1833-1913)

   A pioneer citizen in both the Kansas and Nevada Territories, McKaskia Stearns Bonnifield was originally born in West Virginia on September 14, 1833 (the year 1834 is also given by some sources as his year of birth.) The Bonnifield family moved to Iowa when McKaskia was three, and it is interesting to note that he was one of 15 children born into the Bonnifield family before his father died in 1838. The few sources that detail Bonnifield's life mention him by the initials "M.S.", and when he was originally discovered by me, I had to do quite a search to find out what his first and middle names actually stood for!
   McKaskia Bonnifield attended the Alleghany College in Meadville, Pennsylvania, and married in this town in 1855 to Laura Ames, with whom he had three daughters, Emily (1882-1927), Delia and Dora (1872-1928). After graduating from Alleghany, Bonnifield moved to Kansas, where he passed the state bar exam in 1856. During his stay in Kansas, Bonnifield was active in the Free-Soil Party movement and was elected to a term in the Kansas State Senate in the late 1850s. Strangely, considering the notability of this office, no sources mention how long his service was. He eventually left Kansas and resettled in Humboldt County, Nevada in 1862.
   Within a few short years of his moving to Nevada, Bonnifield became known as one of the leading lawyers in the territory and also staked a claim in the state's vast mining industry. Public office also beckoned to Bonnifield, and in 1868 he was elected to the Nevada Territorial Senate, where he served until 1872. In 1887 Laura Ames Bonnifield died after thirty-two years of marriage and two years later McKaskia remarried to Nellie Lovelock, a widowed resident of Winnemucca. In 1892 Nellie gave birth to a son, McKaskia Jr., who died a little over a year later on February 12, 1894.
   Further political honors were accorded to him in 1892 when he was named as a Democratic presidential elector, and is remarked by the History of Nevada: Her Resources and People as carrying "the vote of the state to Washington, the three electors casting their ballots engraved on silver plates." Three years after he served as an elector, Bonnifield was elected as an Associate Justice of the Nevada Supreme Court and served on the bench for six years. 
  After he retired from the court in 1901, Bonnifield reestablished his earlier law practice in the city of Winnemucca, Nevada, and also maintained active involvement in the Masons, Independent Order of Odd-Fellows and was a member of the local Methodist Episcopal Church. He died in Winnemucca on July 14, 1913, at age 79, and was survived by his second wife Nellie. The portrait of McKaskia Bonnifield shown above was discovered in the 1904 work A History of the State of Nevada: Her Resources and People. This book also stands as one of the few available resources that give a proper biography of Bonnifield and his political/judicial career.

                                                              Bonnifield in his later years.