Salem Pioneer Cemetery ~ Jackson Bonter ~ part of the Marion County Pioneer Cemeteries of Oregon
Jackson "Jack" Bonter
LAST NAME: Bonter FIRST NAME: Jackson MIDDLE NAME:  NICKNAME: Jack
MAIDEN NAME:  AKA 1:  AKA 2:  AKA 3: 
TITLE:  GENDER: M MILITARY: 
BORN: Aug 1833 DIED: 8 Nov 1915 BURIED: 10 Nov 1915
ETHNICITY:  African American OCCUPATION:  Painter
BIRTH PLACE:  Kentucky
DEATH PLACE: Salem, Marion Co., Oregon
NOTES: 

MARRIAGE - Mr. Jackson Bonter & Mary Parks, m 29 Dec 1865; O. Dickenson, M. G. Wit: Wm. Johnson & Jones, the barber #831 pg 284.

1870 OR CENSUS - Jack Bonter, black, age 25, occupation painter, b. Kentucky, is enumerated with Mary, age 21, b. Missouri, along with Wm., age 4, b. Oregon. They are enumerated in the home of J. Williams, age 70, occupation gardner, b.Virginia and Nancy Williams, age 65, b. Kentucky.

NOTE - Mary Bonter, enumerated here in the above census, which was taken in June 1870, actually died in Feb. 1870. Her daughter, Rosetta, is aged 5 months and is enumerated with William and Elizabeth Johnson, who later adopted her.

1895 Marion County Oregon Census - J. A. Bonter, b. KY, 180#, dark, painter, Prot., voter, male, 61.

1900 OR CENSUS - Jackson Bonter, widowed, age 66, occupation painter, b. Aug 1833 in Kentucky.

ADOPTION - Bonter, Jackson: Marion County Commissioners Court Journal, January term of 1872, pg. 599: In the matter of adopting a child: Now on this day W. P. Johnson and Elizabeth his wife present their Petition to this Court Showing that they are residents in said Marion County and also show to the Court that Rosetta Bonter is a child of the age of one year & Eleven months that her mother is dead and ask that they may adopt said child and have her name changed to Rosetta Johnson. -- And. Jackson Bonter also files his affidavit herein Showing that he is the father of Said Rosetta Bonter, And also asks the Court that said W. P. & Elizabeth Johnson may adopt Said Child and have her name changed to Rosetta Johnson. It is therefore ordered by the Courts that the Prayer of the Petitions herein be granted and that Said Child adopted by said W. P. Johnson & wife and that she hereafter bear the name of Rosetta Johnson -- All of which is now here done.


1910 OR CENSUS - Jackson Bonter, age 76, black, widowed, occupation odd jobs, b. Kentucky.

A NOTE ON CERTAIN RELATED BLACK PIONEERS INTERRED IN SALEM PIONEER CEMETERY

Elisabeth Walton Potter, August 13, 2014

Perseverance: A History of African Americans in Oregon’s Marion and Polk Counties (Salem, Oregon: Oregon Northwest Black Pioneers, 2011).

The above-named commendable research project published in 2011 drew significantly from the Salem Pioneer Cemetery database since the database provided the basis for identifying African American burials in Salem Pioneer Cemetery and, where possible, the location of graves. The database made it possible for the Oregon Northwest Black Pioneers to erect an omnibus commemorative marker to all of the Black pioneers interred in the cemetery, “known or unknown,” which was dedicated with due ceremony in 2007.

By the time Friends of Pioneer Cemetery database information and photographs of headstones were copied and entered into other collections, the original sources appear to have become obscure. The Salem Pioneer Cemetery database is not cited in footnotes, nor is credit given to Friends of Pioneer Cemetery for photos of the following gravemarkers among the book’s illustrations: Rosetta [Bonter] Johnson (p. 33), Stanley Charmon (p. 112), Wilbert Henderson (p.116), J.C. Jackson (p. 117), Mary Parks Bonter and Marion Parks (p. 120), and Nancy Bonter Williams (p. 123). On an acknowledgement page in front matter, however, Friends of Pioneer Cemetery is included in a sizeable list of institutions which lent support to the project.

Through marriage and adoption proceedings, Bonter family connections included such other early African American members of the Salem community as William P. Johnson, Jesse Williams, and Mary Parks Bonter, who was buried alongside her twin brother, Marion Parks. Because the graves and gravemarkers of these related persons are clustered in a section of the southeast grounds, and because the headstone of the consequential figure W.P. Johnson was discovered buried near its base by FOPC’s headstone repair volunteers very recently, this note, based on the database and Perseverance, was prepared to highlight the relationships.

Jackson Bonter (August 1833 – Nov. 8, 1915) 1SE from SE corner 365

Jackson Bonter was born in Kentucky and pursued the occupation of painter early in his career. In Oregon, on Dec. 29, 1865, he was married to Mary Parks by Salem's Congregational pastor, Obed Dickinson. In the 1870 Oregon Census, according to the Salem Pioneer Cemetery database, Jack and Mary were enumerated in the household of Jesse and Nancy Bonter Williams along with their son William, age four. After Mary’s death in 1870 and the adoption of his daughter Rosetta by the Johnsons in 1872, Jackson appears not to have remarried. His son George is believed, on the basis of census records, to have made his life and work in Portland. (Perseverance, 34-35). Jackson lived into his eighties. His occupation later in life was listed in census records as “odd jobs.” His funeral service, according to the obituary in the Daily Oregon Statesman quoted in the database, was conducted by Webb & Clough with six well-known figures of the African American community in Salem serving as pall bearers, one of whom, Samuel Brooks, a sawmill worker, would also be interred in 365, in space 1SW from the SW corner. There is no gravemarker for Jack Bonter in evidence in 365. In space 2NW 365 is the headstone of Jackson’s kinswoman, Nancy Bonter Williams. Nancy’s small headstone also bears commemorative epitaphs for her husband and Jackson’s first child, William.

NOTE - Salem Pioneer Cemetery Black Pioneer's Omnibus Memorial was dedicated by the Oregon Northwest Pioneers on 1 Feb 2007.

OBITUARY: 

MANY ATTEND FUNERAL
Many friends attended the funeral of Jackson Bonter, a pioneer Salem resident, which was held yesterday afternoon from the parlors of Webb & Clough. Rev. Richard Avison officiated at the services. Burial was in Odd Fellows cemetery. Acting as pallbearers were George Randles, Mansfield Brooks, John Jones, Samuel Brooks, Charles Maxwell and O.L. Lynthecom.
Daily Oregon Statesman 11 Nov 1915 5:2.

INSCRIPTION: 

No individual marker - is included in the Memorial Black Pioneer Omnibus

SOURCES: 

LR

J. Plant Register

OSBH DC (Marion 1915) #5817

Marion County Oregon Marriage Records, 1849-1871, Vol. I, pg 52

Marion Co., Commissioners Court Journal, Jan term of 1872, pg 599

1870 OR CENSUS (Marion Co., E. Salem, FA #394)

1895 Marion County Oregon Census, Vol. I, pg 87

1900 OR CENSUS (Marion Co., Englewood, ED 143, sheet 6B)

1910 OR CENSUS (Marion Co., E. Salem, ED 225, sheet 14B)

DOS 11 Nov 1915 5:2

Perseverance: A History of African Americans in Oregon's Marion and Polk Counties (Salem, Oregon: Oregon Northwest Black Pioneers, 2011), pp 35, 119-20

CONTACTS: 
LOT: 365 SPACE: 1 SE S 1/2 LONGITUDE:  LATITUDE: 
IMAGES: